#but i also kind of want to go back to orzammar

[mabaris]

the thing I’m very interested to see is Harding’s relationship to other dwarves as her weird magic manifests.

she’s a surfacer; I feel like no matter what happens, Orzammar dwarves are going to point at her as an example, saying, “this is what happens when you lose your stone sense, you basically become a human, and this is why you should stay underground because we’re safe down here”

[kurczeno]

okay a quick question to dragon age fandom

why do we hate jennifer heppler?

i saw this few tumblr posts and everyone was like "but it was jennifer heppler, ew". I'll write my thoughts on her based on WHAT I KNOW and just keep in mind - I was 9 when DA2 came out, I played it but I might simply not know some things about her, some drammas or anything.

like first of all - i know there was a whole drama about her not liking playing games, but i hope we are not true gamers tm, bcs gross.

second of all - i know, she wrote anders in da2 and I hate him (I also like him, I just think hes super inconsistent + an asshole), I really do. He has a terrible char dev arc and is a kind of shitty romance, because no matter what you do, he never trusts you, which really sucks. Also the cannibal thing is weird and kinda makes no sense considering Justice is a spirit, so it's a valid argument. BUT!

a) anders in awakening was written by David. So, while as a writer she should be able to write a character, even if not from scratch, it wasn't the easiest job considering that I'm pretty sure the plan was to make him more tormented and depressed and all that jam. He turned out whiny and just... annoying at times, I'm not going to argue with that, but what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't the easiest job to go from "zevran but even more stupid" (i love daa anders btw) to what they PROBABLY had in mind, especially when you get an already established character. Still, could have been done waaaay better, true.

b) she did write branka, so one of the best characters in origins. The Orzammar plot is truly DA at it's peak, sorry.

c) back to Anders but I don't really think the whole "lack of trust" thing is her fault, because you know. DA2 was super rushed and they worked on tight schedule. So many of the game faults are because the game is barely an RPG tbh (still, a great fucking game though)

d) tbh the cannibalism short story, besides... well cannibalism, that makes a little sense is fine. Like, it's really interesting to see how Anders is slowly loosing his mind. And eating templars. (sorry I will never get over this, I just have all the memes in mind and theyre hilarious)

So is there something I don't know about or is it just "anders sucks, so Jennifer does too"?

sorry if it came out rude, i just wanted to lay down my arguments too and make it "as quick as possible".

[silversed0]

Veilguard's Backgrounds Might Be Neat

I'm like, admittedly more than a little pessimistic about Veilguard!

Between the stuff I didn't like about DAI, the other stuff I didn't like about a lot of the DA books, the development time underscored by writers being dropped as soon as they were done and a whole last minute title change, the trailer basically everyone has expressed distaste for, I'm very much in a place of "I really want this game to be good."

And I don't know if it will be, but also, I'm kinda vibing with the backgrounds!

Maybe not the specific backgrounds themselves—and tbh I never really like in RPGs when you choose an allegiance to a faction as your background, both because often it feels like an uninformed decision and because I think it can be kinda shallow. But what I do like is that it can potentially be the first time people can make Dragon Age characters who really are totally unique from one another.

DAO uses Origins as a foundation for your character—everyone has the same starting point, you just choose how to build it up. And this works fantastically, full stop, I think there's a lot to be said about how a cool community experience is seeing how different people interpret the same character backgrounds and interactions and relationships. DA2 took a step back from that for various reasons, and everyone's Hawke has basically the same starting point. Inquisition kinda steps in the middle, giving different backgrounds, but coupled to each race (with minor permutations depending on if you're a mage or not). And I don't think any of these are bad decisions in and of themselves, just different ideas on how to let players build their character. But there's also always something satisfying in getting to make a character in a game that feels more fully "yours," like you've put the pieces given to you together in a unique way, and I think that's something Veilguard gets to touch on.

Take the Shadow Dragons (marth excluded), for instance. They'e a Tevinter-based faction fighting against slavery and the general magocracy, and like, there's a ton of different ways you could fit into that. As an elf, can you have been a slave yourself, fighting to free others? Or are you foreign and came here specifically to help free your people? As a human are you another Tevinter citizen fighting against the unjust practices of your home, this going double if you're a mage yourself?

As a Qunari of any background, will you get to choose how far from the Qun you are? Can you be Vashoth born outside of it like in DAI, or can you choose to be Tal-Vashoth, someone who willingly fled from it, or maybe even still be with the Qunari? Can a Dwarf character choose from where exactly they come from, if they've always been a Surfacer or if they were born in Orzammar, or maybe even Kal Sharok?

There's potential for a staggeringly different character building experience, potential for really unique interactions and ways to flavor your character, if the game supports them.

. and that kinda is the asterisk, right, because do I expect the game to let you get this crazy and be responsive to it? Ultimately no! But they've opened a door that I super hope they go through, and even if they don't I think it'll be cool to see what kinds of stories people think up for their characters with these much broader foundations and pieces.

[magneticmage]

What are people's thoughts on a transgender Brosca or Aeducan?

Like we're told that Orzammar's caste system is based on one's same-sex caste, right? But, like, how complicated are someone's feelings towards their sex and how it differs from their preferred gender when the entire foundation of their culture is so sex segregated?

(Disclaimer; I'm cisgender so I'm not sure how to word all of this right without coming off as lacking understanding of nuances, accidentally coming off as rude and ignorant, or something, but I will do my best. Please be understanding that I am trying to NOT be rude, just might be a bit ignorant on phrasing things? Under a cut because it can be a bit ramble-y and maybe off-topic in some spots)

So transgender Brosca/Aeducan thoughts are hard to word, especially since I usually play my main ones as being cisgender, but even that is...a whole field of Thoughts.

Like I am aware that cisgender female Aeducan should actually be a different caste (probably some kind of noble or upper warrior caste, if I had to warrant a guess but your mileage may vary) than she is, but is considered functionally royalty in what probably amounts to no small part of her being her father's favorite child (because who cares about rules when your father is the king?). And that cisgender female Brosca is already defying some form of cultural expectation by being a casteless Carta thug rather than being a noble hunter like her sister Rica (nothing against Rica here, as I adore her, but Brosca not being one definitely seems to be a Choice, ya know?).

And if they are lesbian or any other orientation that isn't heterosexual, this also has added dimensions of its own as well. All of which is super interesting on how it comments on Orzammar society. Blah blah blah.

But like....what about transwoman Aeducan? Or transman Brosca?

Like how accepting is Orzammar society of such a thing? I'd assume not very much because of all the implications around potentially changing castes, which is socially frowned upon? Like it may not as big a deal for someone whose parents are roughly equal in terms of caste, but when there's a huge disparity between social ranks like, say, a noble lord and a servant caste mother? And, to digress slightly, it does make me wonder if some lower caste/casteless mothers have ever tried to pass off their assigned female children as sons, regardless of gender identity, all in hopes of a better life for their children. Like how Mary Reed's mom dressed her as a boy to keep getting money from her father's family. I mean, that's happened in our world to some extent as well. And how would someone whose intersex be viewed in this society? Do they just...like get to choose? Or is it a guess?

I don't have any answers.

Back to Brosca and Aeducan though.

How much does Trian's sexist comments about women being breeding flesh sting an Aeducan who views themself as a woman and choses to be one? Does their father most likely acknowledging them as his daughter publicly affect things? What about a Brosca that knows that their assigned sex at birth matching Kalah's is what cost them whatever caste their father was? How do they see those born the same sex as them that then go on to become noble-hunters wishing for a son, so their lives can get better? Does it make them angry or sad? Maybe a mixture of feelings?

Like I know that suffering and issues like these are not all that makes up a transperson's identity and I'm not saying it has to either. I know that some people face enough of these kinds of issues in the real world and would rather not have to deal with it in their video games and that's also okay. They can just decide their character is trans and not make it a big deal and that's a perfectly okay thing to do!

But I just...I have questions and am curious about how it might work in cases where they might want it to be a big deal? Is that a bad thing? That or maybe I worded things badly here or in a way that doesn't quite hit the mark because I'm not transgender?

If anyone else wants to weigh in here with their thoughts, like, please do? Or if there's better worded-meta out there, let me know because I'd love to read it.

Thanks for your time.

[abyssal-ilk]

Where's Mescha's daughter? Out of Orzammar, hopefully. (just started wondering about what kind of future a successful noble hunter's daughter might have and. yikes)

this is such a late response but!!! thank you for the ask!!! i love talking about my girl!

yes, mescha took her daughter with her to the surface when she joined the carta. there was no way in hell she was going to leave marru anywhere near orzammar. it was always the plan to leave orzammar with marru and her son, loirik, to avoid marru ever being put in the same position that she was and to avoid loirik being sent off to fight the darkspawn when he was grown. mescha was young when she had her kids (loirik at seventeen and marru at twenty-two), and spent years securing enough coin to safely leave and go to the surface. she wanted to wait until her kids were a bit older to leave, but she ended up being forced to go when loirik died young after becoming ill. he was the only son she had tying him to the noble she was with, and when rumors went around that marru wasn't his daughter, mescha was forced to flee with marru and ended up joining the carta for safety.

marru is nine at the start of inquisiton, and mescha also had another daughter with the dasher later on named pheebi who's just a few months old! they are kept with friends until haven is destroyed, and afterwards she has them moved to skyhold after getting settled in. marru entertains herself by shadowing the advisors and companions whenever she can, and pheebi is pretty much always on mescha's hip when she's back at skyhold <3

[hellafluff]

@dalishious made a fun fillable chart (blank here) for your DA Faves. Gave my reasoning under the cut bc i love to talk

DAO Companion: Shale of course! If Shale has 1 fan its me and if Shale has 0 fans I'm dead, you know how it goes. Shale is sassy and delightful and I love that they're my nonbinary rep bc I for one LOVE non-human enbies as someone who feels pretty non-human.

DA2 Companion: I'm extremely basic and have been in love with Varric Tetras for years.

DAI Companion: DORIAN!!! His journey through the game and how involved the Quizzy gets feels more personal then any of the other companions and I love the banter the two have together. My Lavellan and him are extremely close.

Excited for Veilguard Companion: Emmrich Volkarin I am Deeply Attracted To You. I have his official art as my phone lockscreen right now. I love necromancers and older men and he's so goddamn cute. Plus, Skeleton friend!!!!!!

Favorite Other Media Character: I've been obsessed with Maevaris Tilani for years and if she isn't in Veilguard I am going to end up on the news. She's a queen and the scene of her and her husband in the fade in the comics makes me so sad.

Favorite NPC: Sandal because I decided to put the Architect in the antagonist slot! I do sincerely love Sandal and I'm excited to see if we get anymore lore on him in DATV. I love the theory that he's a Sha-Brytol.

Favorite PC: Warden-Commander Mirabelle Aeducan, Mira to her friends. I love my get-shit-done exiled princess. She put her brother on the throne but also punched him very hard first chance they were alone. She is still treated as royalty in Orzammar and keeps visiting and making surface trade agreements for them as she searches for a Cure for the Calling. Is she supposed to be doing all that? No but the Wardens sure as shit aren't gonna stop her. She misses Alistair very much but purposefully broke up with him so he could be on the throne. They still keep in contact whenever they can.

Favorite Antagonist: I'm going to kiss The Architect. If we do not see him again in DATV I'm. Well I'm not gonna end up on the news but I will be extremely sad. I want to see the rest of the Ancient Magisters very bad, I think they would make great side DLC content for DATV.

Fave NPC Ship: Wade and Herren are married and I am constantly upset that weren't in Inquisition as like a specialty weapon shop at the very least.

Fave NPC Friends: Blackwall and Sera. The goddamn... Weird Uncle and Weird Niece ass relationship they have. They have some of the best banter in the game. I wasn't a Sera fan for a long time but them together really makes both of their characters shine.

Favorite Romance: I'm extremely basic and want to commit terrorism with and for Anders. Krista Hawke can and will do everything in her power to protect this man.

Favorite Friendship: Dorian again! Seriously, him and my Lavellan are basically in a QPR. He really brings her out of her shell and she matches his energy and wants to help him anyway she can. If she wasn't with Iron Bull by Trespasser she'd probably have gone to Tevinter with him.

Favorite Quest: I like the back half of Paragon of Her Kind a lot, the final confrontation with Branka and Caridin especially. Throw Shale in there for lore and fuck yeah. A lot of it comes down to my Warden being Aeducan and my love of Shale but what can I say, if my Hawke could be a Dwarf she absolutely would have been.

Favorite DLC: I played Jaws of Hakkon as a reluctant mage elf on my last playthrough and fucking sobbed after the Ameridan Meeting. That DLC is absolutely life ruining if you play that kind of Inquisitor, it was all of Adana's deepest fears realized and it shook me how deep in character I got playing it.

Favorite Game: DA2! I love it's jank and story in a story nature and relationship mechanics. I really hope we get a rivalry mechanic in DATV or other games try something like that. I don't want to piss a companion off so much they leave I want them to stay and get bitchy with me in every dialogue! I wanna romance someone who curses my name! Also just has the best story of all the games.

Favorite Other Media: I really enjoyed Absolution! I think some parts of it are under written because of how short it is (Qwydion just being comic relief is the thing that really gets me) but the overall plot and animation is REALLY good! I haven't watched it since it aired tho. I'm hoping it gets another season to cover the Meredith stinger, because I don't know how they'd handle that in DATV.

[anneapocalypse]

1, 2, 4, 8, 19 for the dav meme!

Veilguard Hype Ask Meme!

What was the first Dragon Age game you played?

Origins! I've been here since the beginning. Alongside Fallout 3, it was one of the first RPG video games that absolutely ate my brain. I have fond memories of sitting on my futon playing DAO for like 16 hours straight, forgetting to eat and destroying my back.

2. Which Dragon Age game is your favorite so far?

This is always such a hard question for me to answer, because the three games are all so different, and I have deeply fond memories of all three of them, and I can also look at all three pretty frankly and see their flaws even as I still enjoy them. I think if I have to name a favorite though, it's still Dragon Age 2. Something about its structure and scale, the creative and unusual use of place and time, and its themes, really appeals to me. I've also come to really like the personality lock-in feature even though it does place some limitations on role-playing, and I love the friendship-rivalry system. I love it so much. I think it makes for much more interesting character relationships than simply "Does this character approve or disapprove of my actions?" Are there things about the other games that I prefer, of course. I want to be able to play as an elf or a dwarf or a qunari, for one. But even after all this time, DA2 still hits me a certain way. I love the other two games as well. There's just something about Kirkwall.

4. What does your worldstate look like going into DAV?

So I have like five or six world states and I don't consider any one of them more canon than the others, but I will be going into Veilguard for the first time with Rogues Gallery, which is exactly what it sounds like (and which means the one thing I know about my Rook is they'll be a rogue), featuring Jolene Cousland, Mallory Hawke, and Calla Cadash.

Basic rundown:

The Circle was saved, Connor and Isolde both lived, Zathrian broke the curse, and Harrowmont is King of Orzammar.

Jo romanced Alistair and convinced him to do the Dark Ritual.

They stayed Grey Wardens and rode off into the sunset together.

Anora is Queen of Ferelden.

Nathaniel is alive.

The Architect was spared.

Vigil's Keep and Amaranthine were protected.

Jo went off alone to find a cure for the Calling, and Alistair was left in the Fade.

Carver is dead, Bethany is alive and a Grey Warden.

Mal romanced Isabela. (In my headcanon, they later become a polycule with Merrill but of course that's not in the game.)

She rivaled everyone except the rogues and Merrill.

Bartrand is dead. Varric kept a piece of the idol.

Aveline did not marry Donnic.

Feynriel went to the Dalish, and then to Tevinter.

Clan Sabrae was killed.

Merrill did not destroy the Eluvian.

Mal refused to take any kind of a stand until the very end of Act III where she heaved a big sigh and sided with the mages.

She disapproved of Anders' actions but spared his life.

Mal is still alive and kicking.

Calla romanced Josephine.

She conscripted the rebel mages and the Grey Wardens.

Alistair was left in the Fade.

I left off with her right before Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, so I am not sure of her decisions from her onward! But I do plan to finish this playthrough before Veilguard comes out. :)

8. What faction are you most excited to learn more about?

I'm pretty hype about all of them, but I'd say the Lords of Fortune and the Veil Jumpers the most since we know the least about them!

19. Are you planning to replay any of the previous games, watch Dragon Age: Absolution, or read any of the books/comics/short stories, or are there other games you want to play in the meantime?

I do plan to finish my current playthrough of Inquisition (Calla's playthrough) which is still incomplete. Beyond that, maybe I'll re-read some of my favorite Tevinter Nights stories. I spent about three years (2020-2023) playing the whole series on repeat like 5-6 times and reading and watching all the side content I could get my hands on, so... I'm probably good on that front. ;)

Final Fantasy XIV is getting a new expansion, Dawntrail, in just a couple weeks, so that should occupy a good chunk of my summer, and I expect I'll be ready to play some more Dragon Age in the fall in preparation for Veilguard! (Would love to get an actual release date, though.)

[invinciblerodent]

🍓 arie aeducan and/or arvid trygg?

Well, we had some Arvid earlier, how about another flavor of dwarf! ❤️

(I kinda wish her features were a bit more "dwarfy" now, but I made her over ten years ago, I was ignorant to the beauty of women with big, beautiful noses then, and redesigning her whole face feels like it wouldn't be her anymore :/)

This isn't going to be that much fun of a fact I think, but Arie (actual full name is Aren Lorna Aeducan, after her grandmother, another warrior princess and a very proud one at that) winds up having a very complicated relationship with Orzammar, as time goes on. Namely, she wants back, but the way she remembers it: a sparkling, beautiful, bustling city, the Diamond Quarter and the royal palace its glittering jewels, and not the way it really is.

I like to imagine that in the first portions of the game, she's prone to kind of hyping up Orzammar as a beautiful place, talking about its many sights and all the things that make it special, but when she returns to it after having seen the surface... all she feels is shame.

The sparkle of the gems is dulled by the memory of sunlight in her eyes. Compared to the spring breezes of the surface, the air of Orzammar is dank and stale- she briefly worries that she, too, smells the way it does. Just like how the warmth of the Sun burns and blinds, but after having adjusted to it, the sweltering heat of the lava pools around the city make her feel like she's being roasted alive in her armor, after getting somewhat used to the many noises of the surface (the birdsong, the rain, the insects), the quiet, the oppressive, ever-present quiet only undercut by the living thrum of the Stone, also feels uncomfortable.

For that first night back in the city, after all that happens there, even for all the emotional exhaustion and the reverse culture shock of being home but not quite feeling like it's home, I like to imagine that she can't possibly fall asleep.

After what feels like hours of tossing and turning, it'll be hearing Al and Duster (her dog) snoring quietly that'll finally lull her to sleep.

She never does end up going back to Orzammar. After the game, she'll fully embrace her status as Sun-touched, even though she is a Paragon, and she'll never again return underground.

[flowersonpebbles]

Week 1: Origins 3. Faith – Dallas

@elfroot-and-laurels

TW: angst, possession(?)

Dallas grew up learning the Chant, of Andraste and the Maker and it was all fine and well enough, but he always questioned so much of it and no one ever approved of his questioning – thus he stopped and let them talk and sing. Never really believing, he believed Leliana’s dream, not necessarily from the Maker, but he believed in her believing it. Even at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, he had questions, wondering constantly. A spirit, not aggressive, but then the others were and he called them brothers once. So the Chantry lied about all spirits being demons and the spirit of Valor in his Harrowing was no lie… so if a spirit could change its nature, could a demon as well? Like Sloth who did not attack him and Mouse… and Mouse who was so kind and scared… until Dallas started thinking maybe he was the enemy instead and changed so quickly...

(big stuff below the cut, very long and not really part of the origin part anymore but I got carried away and it wouldn’t feel right to add to the travel week instead, so… read if you want I guess? Just thoughts/theories and my boi being curious but I don’t go too deep into anything I think)

Morrigan and Wynne both also made him question everything. Morrigan was so casual and powerful without any need of the Circle or the Chantry. And Wynne is essentially possessed by a spirit… Morrigan answered some questions but she was not open to debate much… the same for Wynne…

He was too much in a hurry the first time he met the Dalish, he could only scribble down when resting what he could find on their beliefs… and again, he had so many questions. These people believed in forever living, simply going to sleep instead of dying? Of different Gods and what they stand for. It almost made sense to him, but again…

Why worship these divine beings when they do not intervene? The Maker did not save his beloved Andraste, nor did the Creators save their worshippers from being slain?

Some Dalish were upset by his questioning and once again he was left to stay quiet with his questions and had to move on once Zathrian and the Lady of the Forest had met their ends together after much fighting… and yet again… A spirit that caused a curse yet soothed those who were cursed out of kindness…trees that were all feral but for one who spoke in rhymes and polite… what oddities the world has and no one wishes to look deeper…

In Orzammar, he learned of some of their beliefs and culture, a lot of it was upsetting to him. How could you rebuke a baby for being born from someone you regard as nothing as also nothing without even trying to help the babe or teach it anything else? Or for leaving so bravely and they no longer are seen as your own, also nothing now? But without either nothings, you’re oblivious or too aware of how much you rely on them to show a system that gives you power? And not to even speak of how grimly the fates of Grey Wardens and the Legion of the Dead is intertwined… No, Bhelen might have been a little too bloodthirsty but at least he wanted to change their system. They believe in the Stone that keeps them housed and lets them build and mine… physical, not always practical in Dallas’ eyes but it’s better than something not there.

Once the Blight was over, he went with Sten for a time, Zevran followed along, of course. Very practical people, if stifling for Dallas. You have a role; you have your responsibilities in that role. It makes life easy and straight forward, yet where is the choices? The will to actually try and learn something you’re not naturally adapted to? Oh, and not to even speak of how he needed to hide his magic, Sten was very stern about this. He saw why once… he was terrified then; the questions were quick to quiet down afterwards and they even bid Sten a sad goodbye as he and Zevran left to go back home almost quicker…

They ventured back down to the Wilds; Dallas wanted to see and learn a bit from the Chasind. They were also practical; shamans are taught from the Witch of the Wilds. Flemeth. If it were Morrigan’s mother, he was not sure. But at least they weren’t as skittish of magic as others. He saw beauty in their way of portraying the seasons as women… they admired him for his control of magic being able to aid him in battle with actual weapons and armor. And his mind wandered to even more questions in their beliefs though… and so his cycle of being rejected keeps happening.

Zevran never rejected his questioning, always indulging him, actually. The Rivaini Seers fascinate Dallas so… They believe the spirits, the universe and any gods to be the same! The Rivaini Seers communicate with spirits, lets them possess them. Yet abominations happen so rarely there apparently! How utterly fascinating it is to listen to Zevran speak… he hopes to go to Rivain with him one day!

They travelled back North, passing by Avvar in the meantime… they fascinated Dallas just as much. Also worshipping different Gods of elements, like the Sky or Ocean… but they also openly enjoy spirits, the Augur commune with the spirits, they also call them Gods! He also noticed that the Avvar are ever changing, nothing is in a standstill or stagnant. His questions were met with skepticism but they were still answered openly. A breath of fresh air from people who are not Zevran…

His journeys of questionings had to stop to act as the Warden-Commander though, Zevran left at Dallas’ behest to continue adventuring, he’d catch up as long as Zevran sends letters. In his adventures with his new companions, he learned more of the Dalish… Valanna eventually even agreed upon giving him vallaslin. She was crude but at least she answered his questions, but they both had many more when Justice was discovered and welcomed along.

Eventually everything was said and done and he went on to catch up with Zevran in the Free Marches. But only after visiting his first home he could ever really remember having, visiting Jowan as well… he felt relief after he and his now tranquil friend had spoken… he even decided to take Mouse with him… Mouse was Mouse when Dallas decided that’s who he was looking for and wanted to take along with him.

In the Free Marches, they were frowned upon as outsiders. Not many wanted to answer his questions on their journey to Antiva… Nevarra was too far off track for the amount of time Dallas felt he had left, sadly… but he could find some interesting books on their ways, even books of the Imperium, but only in Antiva were they not demonized. Most fascinating… Mouse and I were in awe of all of this knowledge of the Nevarrans who gently allow spirits to move on when they feel stuck. But the Imperium… too much slavery, too much sacrifice and bullying – too much akin to Andrastians. They were content at last, questions they can now try to figure out themselves await them.

[daitranscripts]

The Descent Pt. 6

Forgotten Caverns

The Descent Masterpost First: Storm Coast Fissure Previous: Ruins of Heidrun Thaig

The party gets off the next lift and ventures into the dark.

Valta: What was that?

Renn: What was what?

Valta: Something moved. There. Light a torch.

Renn: So it can see us coming? Just stay close.

Party comments:

Varric: Nothing’s stopping us from going back up. PC: We’re not going back up. Varric: (Sighs.) Just a suggestion.

Solas: The air is different. Stale.

Sera: Down. Down. Oh, let’s go down again. (Snickers.) “Down again.”

Cole: It’s wrong here. Too many whispers. The song is wrong. Chords cut to silence.

Blackwall: Stay together. It’s easy to get lost down here.

Iron Bull: Rather be fighting something I can see.

Vivienne: The deeper we go, the more oppressive it becomes.

Dorian: I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but I believe we’ve all gone blind.

Cassandra: We are practically blind down here.

Valta: We’ve gone past the Deep Roads.

PC: How can you tell? It’s pitch black.

Valta: I can feel it.

Eyes appear and disappear as the party moves through the caverns. There’s movement in the darkness.

Renn: Show yourselves!

Renn gets hit with something.

Valta: Renn!

He collapses to one knee.

Renn: Hm… sod it all.

Valta: No!

Renn: (Roars.)

They fight the unknown assailants, fending off lyrium bullets. They eventually defeat them all, and Renn falls to the ground. Valta kneels beside him.

Valta: You deserved better.

She looks towards the PC.

Valta: Renn never wanted this life. He was a cobbler. A good one. He joined the Legion to pay his father’s debts. It kept his mother and brother from losing their caste. The poor and desperate here often sacrifice themselves for their family’s future.

Dialogue options:

Sad: I’m sorry for your loss. [1]

Stoic: He knew the risks. [2]

Angry: They will pay for this. [3]

1 - Sad: I’m sorry for your loss. PC: Renn was a good man. We’ll honor his sacrifice. Valta: He always seemed… indestructible. [4]

2 - Stoic: He knew the risks. PC: Renn walked into this with his eyes open. Everyone in the Legion knows their fate. Valta: They’re treated like walking corpses. It’s wrong. Renn served for ten years. And he was so full of life. [4]

3 - Angry: They will pay for this. PC: We will find whatever, whoever did this, and make them stop. [4]

4 - Scene continues.

Valta: The armor on these warriors… there’s lyrium woven directly into the metal. And it’s bonded to their skin. Impossible to remove, but I know what we’d find underneath. These are dwarves. Renn was killed by our own kind.

Dialogue options:

General: They’re not from Orzammar. [5]

General: Why did they attack? [6]

General: Their weapons are powerful. [7]

5 - General: They’re not from Orzammar. PC: They don’t look like any dwarves I’ve ever met. Valta: Me neither. It just doesn’t make sense. We’ve done nothing to them. [8]

6 - General: Why did they attack? PC: If they’re fellow dwarves, why did they fight us? Valta: They never spoke a word. No warning, no demands… just violence. [8]

7 - General: Their weapons are powerful. PC: All it took was a single strike. Renn never had a chance. Valta: The bolt was glowing. Their weapons could also have been infused with lyrium. [8]

8 - Scene continues.

Valta: I won’t leave Renn like this. We must return him to the Stone.

Valta: Atrast tunsha, salroka.

Valta: I’ll see this through, Renn. I promise.

The party continues.

Valta: Anything standing between us and the Titan will regret it.

The party comes across some runes on the walls.

Valta: This is like the Wall of Memories in Orzammar, but ancient. Very ancient. The words seem based in dwarven, but I barely recognize this dialect.

PC (dwarf PC): Is it related to our language? PC (non-dwarf PC): Can you translate any of it?

Valta: Only fragments. The language is very different from what we speak today. This word keeps appearing: “Sha-Brytol.”

PC (dwarf PC): My ancient dwarven is rusty… something about “guardians”? Valta (non-dwarf PC): I believe it means “revered defenders.”

Dialogue options:

General: Defenders of what? [9]

General: That’s… a long time. [10]

General: Let’s keep moving. [11]

9 - General: Defenders of what? PC: What needs to be protected all the way down here? [12]

10 - General: That’s… a long time. PC: That’s quite a long stewardship. Valta: They attacked us because they’re protecting something… [12]

11 - General: Let’s keep moving. PC: If it doesn’t help us stop the earthquakes, we need to keep searching. Valta: If these “defenders” killed Renn, I want to know why. [12]

12 - Scene continues.

Valta: “Isatunoll… Isatunoll… Cut our tongues… entomb our bodies… watch over the Titan until it stirs.” So the warriors who attacked us must be the Sha-Brytol. And they’re protecting a Titan.

PC: Are you all right, Valta?

Valta: I can hear Renn’s objections.

She pauses.

Valta: Let’s keep moving. If more of these Memories exist, they may have the answers we need.

They continue into the caverns and approach a bridge.

Valta: There’s something… strange on the other side. I can feel it…

Varric: My guess is another earthquake—that hits when we’re halfway across the bridge.

PC: Watch your step.

They begin to cross, and the bridge collapses from an explosion.

Valta: That wasn’t a quake. Someone sabotaged the bridge. And we don’t have time to fix it.

Solas: Someone does not wish to be disturbed. There must be another way.

Valta: There! That ledge! We can reach it if we’re careful.

Iron Bull: If we wanted to be careful, we’d be up on the surface.

They make their way down the ledge and find more carvings.

PC: Look there—more ancient carvings.

Valta: Aye, but these seem to be about… the Titan. “It shapes the stone. It is the stone. It sculpts the world within and without.”

13 - Dialogue options:

Investigate: The sounds… big. [14]

Investigate: Is it like Shaping the Stone? [15]

Investigate: Did Titans create the Stone? [16]

General: They’re just legends. [17]

General: We must be nearing a Titan. [18]

General: The quakes chance the stone… [19]

14 - Investigate: The sounds… big. PC: Wouldn’t something that can “sculpt the world” have to be rather… enormous? Valta: It is called a “Titan.” [back to 13]

15 - Investigate: Is it like Shaping the Stone? PC: So it’s a “Shaper of the Stone,” like you? Valta: This implies that the Titans are actually sculptors—and our world is their clay. [back to 13]

16 - Investigate: Did Titans create the Stone? PC: If Titans “shape the stone,” could they have actually created it? Valta: The Stone must have existed first. PC: Then the Titans would be the very first children of the Stone… Valta: That would have huge implications for my people. [back to 13]

17 - General: They’re just legends. PC: I’m not sure ancient folk tales are a trustworthy source of information. Valta: I have spent my life preserving stories and events. Every myth contains a kernel of truth. [20]

18 - General: We must be nearing a Titan. PC: More Memories, more Sha-Brytol—we must be getting close to a Titan. Your theory about the source of the quakes is looking more like fact. [20]

19 - General: The quakes chance the stone… PC: If Titans can purposely reshape the world, the earthquakes could be the way they “sculpt the Stone.” Valta: But the quakes are destructive. Titans would mold the world, not smash it to pieces. PC: Depending on your perspective, change can be violent. [20]

20 - Scene continues.

Valta: But if this is true, how could it be missing from the Memories of Orzammar? Why would someone erase such an integral part of our history?

There’s another quake.

PC: Let’s answer that after we stop the earthquakes.

Valta: The rhythm is louder than ever. We’re close.

Next: Bastion of the Pure

[queenaeducan]

Questions for Thora: 4- attitude towards Andrastianism? 18- do they have any irrational fears?

Questions for your Hawke: 6- attitude towards the Qun? 16- do they get sentimental about their weapons or armour?

Questions for your Warden: 13- their thoughts on the Grey Warden order? 23- do they have, or want to have, children? 23-a: if they want to have children, what do you do with the obscure lore that wardens have impaired fertility? (obviously "I ignore it as the Maker intended" is a valid response according to me)

DA Worldstate Questions!

Thora Cadash

4. attitude towards Andrastianism?

Thora is Andrastian- or rather, she believes in both the Stone and the Maker. This is based on some lore that I believe is from Orzammar discussing how the two don't contradict each other (so really Cass should be asking Cadash if there's not room for the Maker in their lives rather than Lavellan).

Her attitude towards Andrastianism is different from her attitude towards the Chantry. She believes in and finds strength in Andraste and her story, perhaps in many ways more than in the Maker. The Chant gives her strength and she loves to sing it. When it comes to the Chantry, she has always felt excluded from it. She might have joined it had she been allowed (and in her companion verses if Leliana is Divine she may serve her), but over time she comes to be more critical of it. Kirkwall taught her to question the Circle, and Inquisition drives those questions to the root of the problem. She does want to believe it can change and supports Leliana in pursuit of that change.

18. do they have any irrational fears?

Not really. She's afraid of deep water and dogs. In the Nightmare she doesn't see spiders, but her companions as they appeared in the Red Lyrium future. All of those fears have some pretty solid basis. Her biggest thing that impacts her day-to-day is that blood/corpses make her ill despite death being part of her job, but again I can't really call that irrational, just unusual for adventuring fantasy protagonists.

Sylvia Hawke

6. attitude towards the Qun?

Definitely not for her. She is more or less the Arishok's foil, undisciplined and chaotic to his control and order.

Her attitude to it at large is less negative than you might expect, in part due to the grudging respect she comes to hold for the Arishok. She also can't say she's a fan of the natural conclusion of its enforcement, which is to say: the conquering of the south. While she had sympathy for the situation of the qunari, after she discovers why they really stuck around so long she found them a little pitiable. She'd fled her home because of the Blight, they were in exile over a book.

16. do they get sentimental about their weapons or armour?

Not at all. She likes to add little touches that she carries from one piece to the next, but isn't attached to any kind. Ironically, in her playthrough I do end up having the same robes through most of act 2 and 3 (robes of the notorious pirate) because there are only a handful of pants for mages in DA2 and Sylvia just isn't a dressy robe person. So she isn't sentimental, but she is picky.

Tamar Aeducan

(Tamar isn't my OC, but my spouse's, but she is my worldstate Warden and the one I'm carrying to DA4).

13. their thoughts on the Grey Warden order?

Tamar is realistic about it. She takes her duties seriously, but finds a lot about the Order to criticise. She had a poor relationship with Clarel when they were both still alive, and is more likely to grant Solas his due in his criticisms than Ian, who holds the Order up on a pedestal. Tamar also is willing to play a little loose with the rules- for example, during Ian's recruitment in DA:O she "recruits" him with no intention of having him Join, letting him go back to his clan after the Archdemon's defeat.

23. do they have, or want to have, children?

She doesn't have any. Tamar has issues conceiving even in verses where she isn't a Warden, like our Modern Thedas verse. She does want them, as does Gorim, but there isn't room for one in her life as Warden-Commander. In Modern Thedas they do adopt, though!

[serensama]

In Sacrifice, Glory: Chapter 2

My never ending love and thanks to @illneverrecover and @femme-moon ❤️

Read on Ao3

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

Elissa thanked the Maker that the only people who saluted her the following morning were the soldiers who were stationed around the camp. She still had a distinct feeling that she was being watched, albeit much more covertly than before, but at least she wasn’t in any danger of being asked to bless someone’s baby or heal the wounded with her tears. 

Elissa rolled the dull ache out of her shoulders as she walked around the small village; She could hear the distinct din of people training to her right, the clanging of metal somehow soothing to her– familiar even. Her feet had found their way back to the merchant to look through his goods, noting the sword she had been admiring the previous day was no longer available. “Someone bought it already, Miss,” the blond man said when he noticed her at his stand. “Not too long after you were looking at it actually.”

Elissa managed to hold in a squeak but couldn’t quite hide her flinch at being spoken to.

“Oh? Thank you for letting me know; it was a fine sword... I think. I don’t know if I know too much about them, but it looked like it would serve its wielder well, Master-?” “Seggrit. Just Seggrit. Not to worry though; you were right, it was a good sword. But I don’t think they bought it because it was a good sword. They bought it because they wanted to believe it received your blessing. Managed to make an extra 2 gold off of that, thanks to you. Please feel free to keep touching anything else you want here.” “Y’know, if you just stopped talking two sentences earlier, Lady Flash Hand here wouldn’t be looking at you like you just whipped out your own sword for her to bless.”

Elissa turned on her heel to see Varric Tethras grinning up at her, Bianca being cleaned on his bent knee. She quickly bid Seggrit a good day and sat on a log beside the charming dwarf, grateful to have someone familiar to talk to.

“Morning Varric,” she greeted as she tucked her bare hands between her legs for warmth.

“Morning Stormy.” Elissa furrowed her brow at him, curious as to the nickname bestowed upon her. He chuckled at her confusion as he searched for a secondary rag to start polishing up his prized crossbow. “Your magic. Hard to ignore all the lightning and thunder you have at your fingertips.” She smiled at the simple term of endearment and agreed that it made sense. He could have dubbed her Thunderella or Sparky-Pants, so she guessed she should be thankful for some small mercies. “It also matches the grey of your eyes. They’re probably the first thing everyone noticed about you—apart from the green glowing hand of doom you got there. Hey, would you pass me that cloth besides you?” He asked with his arm out expectantly.

Elissa mindlessly handed it to him as she felt the words ‘thanks, they actually lean more blue like my father’s’ on the tip of her tongue, except she had no idea if that was correct. She had tried to recall any image of her father, her mother, or any siblings, and nothing came to mind at all. Just a series of doors she needed to unlock in the haze of her mind.

“So now that we’re as alone as we’re ever going to get in a camp full of people, how are you holding up?” He asked with a genuine look of concern. “I mean, you go from being the most wanted criminal in Thedas to joining an army of faithful and becoming somewhat of a figurehead here.” “Urgh, you saw that yesterday?” “The dwarves deep in Orzammar saw that yesterday,” he snorted at her, pleased to see that at least she hadn’t let everything go to her head. “I’m just saying that most people would have spread that kind of character development out over more than a day.”

Elissa kicked at the snow with her boot until the brown earth was revealed, relieved to see the ground hard and real beneath her. “I can barely keep up, Varric,” she said, her voice small but her honesty resonant.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

Elissa looked up at the rogue and smiled, chasing off days of confusion, sadness, and fear from her pretty features. Varric could feel his gut tingle with the well-known feeling he got whenever he looked at Hawke, and he grimaced. That was not a good tingle.

“Listen, I know you want to help and that you’re a good kid; that much is obvious,” he stated as he gently put Bianca away. “But you may want to consider running away at the first chance you get; I’ve written enough tragedies to know where this is going. We’re going to need a miracle to get us out of... whatever this is.”

She nodded, and her expression turned sombre, her mind twisting upon itself to make heads or tails of the entire situation. The Mark. The Mystery Woman. The Sky. The Villain. The Faith. Too much.

“I’m not quite sure that I believe this isn’t still an ale-driven dream and that I’ll wake with no trousers somewhere and a penis drawn on my face.”

Varric laughed loudly and slapped his knee, agreeing that that would be a sight indeed.

“I honestly don’t know if this is all really happening, Varric.”

He stood up and clasped a calloused hand on her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. “Me too, Stormy. And if this is all the Maker just winding us up, I hope there is a damn good punchline coming.”

“Yeah... But I just don’t want to be the joke.”

---

Elissa’s expedition around town was a resounding success. From somehow irritating the Quartermaster just by breathing, helping Adan find some misplaced potion notes – which were literally in the first drawer she opened in the cabin he told her to look in – and then Solas.

Solas.

The amount of comfort she found in the older elf was surprising. He was all stories and poetry, and if she were just that little bit more naïve she’d be head over heels in love with the apostate. He never tired of her endless questions, whether it was about magic, his experiences in the Fade, or even his opinion on the lunch they were serving in the tavern; he was always patient and easy with his answers.

Solas allowed his eyes to scan the area around him before leaning towards her, the brunt of his weight held up by his staff.

“And again, she rises. Good morning Miss-” “Good Morning. And it’s just Elissa, Solas,” she chided, eyes squinting at him with mock annoyance.

“My apologies. Elissa,” he corrected himself with a smile, “I could not help but notice during our time out in the field. But... your technique–” “You’re kind to describe whatever I did out there as technique.”

“Ah, well, if you would be amenable to the idea, I would be happy to provide whatever tutelage I can.”

Elissa brightened at the offer, eager to learn all she could after watching the older mage fight. “Yes, of course, thank you. I would really appreciate not electrocuting everyone on the field should I need to sneeze.” “You are too hard on yourself, Elissa, without any help to hone your abilities from the start–” he tried to reason before being cut off with an agitated grumble. “That’s the thing. I don’t know if this is so much a start or a restart, Solas. Like I feel I should know better, but I’m just grasping blindly at air,” she sighed as she leant on the cabin behind him and peered at the green-tinged sky. “I feel like I should know something, but how could I when I don’t even know who I am.” Solas solemnly nodded as he copied her casual stance, the mage looking at the people who went in and out of the apothecary. The two stood in quiet companionship, both seemingly lost within their own thoughts.

“Do you remember the name of the first King of Ferelden?” he asked, suddenly causing Elissa to jump. “Calenhad, of course,” she replied without a moment's hesitation. “The name of the town you grew up in?” “I... Lothering? No... Gwaren? Look, I’m pretty sure I’m Fereldan. I think.” “And the pub in Denerim, what is the name of it?” “The Gnawed Noble.” “How many exalted marches have there been?” “Six. No wait. Seven. No, six– oh, my teacher would kill me.”

“What was the name of that childhood teacher?”

“I... Maker... I don’t know,” she spluttered as her shoulders slumped in disappointment. “How can I know all those things but not know if I’m at least bloody Fereldan? I don’t even know if I’ve been to Denerim, but I must have to be able to tell you that, right?”

“Give yourself some time; there is no need to rush,” he tried to soothe. “I just wanted to test a theory I had– and it seems I was correct. All the memories you seem to have difficulty recollecting are those that pertain to who you are.” Elissa threw her braid back over her shoulder in frustration, a light flush colouring the apples of her cheeks.

“Wonderful, I will be able to recite the family trees of all the great houses of the country, but I will not be able to know if I am deathly allergic to anything I eat. Delightful. I can see it now, the woman who closed the Breach, killed by a strawberry.”

Solas smirked down at her, unable to hide how impressed he was at the young woman’s ability to bounce back from her moment of dejection. “I would not worry too much about errant fruit killing you just yet; remember well that I have offered my help to find these wayward memories of yours,” he reminded as he held up his hand that glowed with a pulse of his mana.

“I know, and I thank you,” she said as she chewed on her bottom lip in irritation. “If it weren’t for the giant threat looming over me and all of Thedas, I would gladly take all the time to mull over things. But as it is, the sooner my forgetful ass remembers everything, the better.”

Solas regarded her with a pensive expression as a surge of unexpected emotion for the girl welled up inside of him, a perfect mixture of empathy, pity, and admiration.

“Oftentimes when things like this happen, it is for a reason Elissa. You have endured a massive ordeal and survived something no one else did. It is likely that your mind is doing its best to shield you – from what I cannot say. However, if the only thing that has gone awry in all this madness is your memory being harder to tap into than before, then it seems we have been given some sort of blessing indeed. Whether it is heavenly given or not, it remains to be seen.”

Elissa turned to face him, tilting her chin up to look into his eyes, mouth slowly curling into a pout. “That was not comforting at all, Solas. In fact, it was the exact opposite of comforting.” Solas brought the back of his hand to his mouth as he laughed through his nose before succumbing to quiet laughter. “You’re an odd, mean old man, Solas,” she said as she playfully deepened her frown, lightly elbowing his bicep.  

“You are not the first to say this, and I’d wager you will not be the last.”

--- After what was a surprisingly pleasant meal at the tavern, Elissa knew there was not much else she could feasibly accomplish without understanding more about the camp and what needed to be done. She had heard that there was a meeting being held at the Chantry and wondered if she should make her way down, if she would even be welcome to sit in and listen to their discussion to learn more about their group. In hindsight, it may have been smarter to say yes to joining their merry band after she had seen what they were like, how they treated their people, and receiving general insurance that they weren’t megalomaniacal cultists hell bent on taking over the world with a new Divine carved out of a giant wheel of cheese.

She rose to try to clear her table but was quickly rushed out by the kindly barmaid, who wouldn’t listen to a word of treating her like everyone else in Haven. With firm but polite hands on her lower back, the woman ushered her out like a disobedient child and bid her return when the sun had set for the evening meal. Elissa could feel the start of a flutter of warmth growing behind her ribcage – the familiarity of being cared for or nagged at – she didn’t know, but it made her eyes sting with emotion unbidden. Shaking off the cold a little more noticeably as she headed up the path towards the Chantry, she hoped that her shiny eyes and reddened nose looked like they were just affected by the weather and not by the lingering sadness she didn’t know how to explain.

Once she had reached the entrance, she paused. Should she wait to be summoned? Should she just go ahead and knock and pop her head in to see if they’d let her in? Should she send for a messenger to ask if she was needed?

“Are you well?”

Elissa congratulated herself for not flinching at the sound of Cassandra’s voice and greeted the taller woman with a slight bob of her head.

“Cassandra. I am well, thank you, yourself?” “I cannot complain. Your hand, does it still trouble you?” She asked as she looked at it pointedly.

Elissa looked at it quickly in case mentioning it sparked anything within the mark and breathed out relieved when it just remained its eerie green self, no flashes of pain to be had– at least, yet.

“You’ve given us more time–” “We, not just me.”

“Semantics. You’ve given us time, and Solas believes a second attempt might succeed—provided the mark has more power. The same level of power used to open the Breach in the first place. But that is not easy to come by,” she advised as they walked together towards the meeting room.

Elissa tried to piece together what that power would look like and paled at the thought of the Inquisition’s entire force standing behind her, only to be unceremoniously squished by an army of Pride demons free falling from the Breach. “Uh, yeah, sounds like fun,” she joked as Cassandra smirked wryly at her.

The Seeker opened the door without preamble and gestured for her to walk into the room, halting the conversation from within immediately. Elissa recognised Leliana easily and was grateful that the woman did not seem to want to slaughter her on sight anymore. Her eyes drifted to another woman, with glorious tanned skin and a wonderful sense of high society fashion. She exuded respectability and held herself with the practised graces of polite society. In truth, when she compared her to Leliana, she did not know who to be more frightened of– the woman who held a dagger or the one with the quill. In between them was a tall, fair-haired man who regarded her with kind civility. In heavy armour and garments of deep red, even if he weren’t so handsome, he would be difficult for anyone to miss in a crowd. Elissa clasped her hands together to stop herself from entertaining anymore of those thoughts lest she tumble down a steep hill of indecency.

“May I present Commander Cullen, leader of the Inquisition’s forces.” He is welcome to command me–

“Such as they are, we have lost many soldiers, and I fear many more before all this is through,” he said with a slight bow at his introduction, his voice even warmer than she had anticipated.  

“This is Lady Josephine Montilyet, our ambassador and chief diplomat.” “I have heard much; it is a pleasure to meet you at last,” the woman with the fantastic outfit greeted, manoeuvring her writing board slightly so as not to spill any ink.

“And of course, you know Sister Leliana,” Cassandra added as an afterthought as she caught the redhead’s eyes, “she is our spymaster.”

Elissa quickly looked between Leliana and Cassandra and could feel their exasperation at each other’s antics, one from trying to be as tactful as possible and the other tired of tiptoeing around something that shouldn’t matter between comrades. “It is a pleasure to meet you all, but I can’t help but feel quite insignificant compared to all the impressive titles in here,” she joked, trying to break the ice and earning subdued chuckles from everyone except Leliana, whose countenance was so guarded that she did not know what to make of it. Her stare was fixed on Elissa, boring through her as if she were trying to listen to her thoughts through sheer determination alone, bright blue eyes searching for something she did not feel she could provide. She was so wrapped up in her staring contest with the Sister that she did not take heed to what was being argued about until Leliana replied to one of Cullen’s statements, the spy much more adept than her at paying closer attention to her surroundings.

“The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition,” Josephine stated as a matter of fact before she turned to Elissa, “and you, quite specifically.”

Elissa’s confusion grew; why her specifically? Didn’t she already prove that she was there to help as best as she could? What else did she have to do? Hold a placard at all times that read, ‘I am not a mass murderer; try not execute.’ She was just about to rebut when the Ambassador continued with her explanation.

“Some are calling you, a mage, the Herald of Andraste, a frightening notion for the Chantry. They declare it as blasphemy and the Inquisition heretics–” “That will be the Chancellor’s doing, no doubt,” Cassandra sneered as she refixed her arms across her chest in agitation.

“I... I heard some of the people in camp,” Elissa uttered, holding the edges of the table for support. “They were whispering something whilst they looked at me. Maker– even that merchant near the entrance was saying a sword I held yesterday had been ‘blessed’ by me, and I didn’t even pick up on it; didn’t think to ask questions.” Cullen shifted his weight on either foot and took a good look at the woman beside Cassandra, encouraged by her willingness to be transparent with them; grateful she did not feel the need for layers upon layers of diplomacy and fakery.

“Herald of Andraste, now that is quite the title,” he teased good-naturedly, his mouth quirking to the side. “How do you feel about it?”

She took in a deep breath and tried to steady herself; logically, she understood why people would call her that. What with her being the only survivor of the Conclave, being spat out of a hole in the sky and then some random apparition practically hand-delivering her to safe harbour into the Inquisition’s hands. However, that logic did nothing to relieve the ever-present knot in her gut or lessen the fear she felt at the mere mention of being anyone’s ‘Herald’ of anything.

“I– uh, it’s a little unsettling if I’m to be honest,” she confessed, her cheeks flushing prettily as the Commander offered a small but kind smile to ease her.

“I’m sure the Chantry would agree,” he snickered. He could just envision Roderick somewhere in a nearby village already avowing their descent into madness to anyone who would pay him any mind.

Leliana walked to her side and stood a little too close for comfort, forcing Elissa to pay attention to what was said next.

“The point is, everyone is talking about you. People are desperate for a sign of hope,” she paused, a flicker of true emotion passing across her face as she fought for control over herself. “For some... you... you are that sign.”

“And to others, a symbol of everything that has gone wrong,” Josephine added sadly.

Cassandra quickly noted when Elissa’s attention went introspectively, something she had done quite often since her release from confinement nearly five days prior. She took an educated guess at what the younger girl was thinking and clucked her tongue at her, shaking her head disapprovingly. “You not being here is not an option, Elissa; do not think we would be any better off without you.” “Cassandra is right,” Cullen said, leaning against the large table, “the Chantry would have censured us no matter what.”

Elissa saw a gloved hand reach out towards her, but as she turned to look at Leliana, she was already putting it down to readjust her tunic.

“There is something only you can do. Mother Giselle has asked to speak to you...” the Spymaster began, not quite looking Elissa in the eye.

“Suuure. Another Cleric wants to speak to me, yet this plan isn’t crying out, ‘Let’s stick the blasphemer full of pitchforks’ to anyone else?” she snarked. “From what I know of Mother Giselle, she is a kind soul. She is tending to the wounded in the Hinterlands near Redcliffe. Rest assured she would not involve herself in violence,” Leliana replied as she fell back away from Elissa, allowing more space between them, her normal reticent façade firmly back in place. 

Murderer. Liar. Mage. Heretic. Herald. So many titles were gifted to her in less than a week, yet she would give her left tit just to know her own surname.

Hours later, as she walked out of the meeting with a plan to travel out and meet the Mother and help their forces with what she could, she looked towards the open gates of the camp and wondered how far she would get if she took Varric’s advice and just ran away. As she took a look back behind her, she saw Leliana watching her, as if the woman already knew what her little brain was plotting.

She really should have run when Varric told her to.

---

Elissa could not sleep.

She had tossed and turned for the better part of three hours, and still the Fade would not grant her rest.

Huffing loudly, she threw the covers off her body and allowed the chill of the mountain air to steal away the last vestiges of drowsiness from her. After she shuffled into her boots, too agitated to pull them up all the way, she tied the laces around her ankles to ensure she wouldn’t fall on her face as she traipsed through the camp and accidentally get run through by one of the sleepy guards on duty. She pulled off one of the blankets from the foot of the bed and wrapped herself as snuggly as she could to ward off the extra bite from the evening chill.

From the way she naturally moved, she knew she was certainly no rogue, and that stealth was never something she would have been skilled at. Still, she took extra care to close the door behind her as quietly as possible and took slow, measured footsteps so as not to disturb any light sleepers around the site. Elissa looked up to the sky, as she so often did, and despaired at how beautiful the Breach looked against the stars. It was unfair that something so picturesque had caused so much havoc and devastation to the world.

She sighed then chuckled to herself at the puff of smoke that tumbled out of her mouth as if she were still a child, pretending to smoke a pipe. Surely she would be old enough to smoke? Was there a way to check a person’s age like with trees and their rings... She stopped in her tracks when she realised the equivalent would be someone cutting her down and trying to count something within her bones and just decided she didn’t really care how old she was after all.

Elissa did not have a destination in mind for her midnight stroll but found her feet naturally walking towards the Chantry. Perhaps she could review the map and see if staring at the world would entreat any memories to awaken, or maybe read up on any of the new reports that had come through to ready herself for what was waiting for them in the Hinterlands.

She was about to step into the Chantry when she felt a stare on her back that she had become accustomed to. Peeking over her shoulder, Elissa could make out the dim light of a candle close to burning out and the well-camouflaged figure of the Spymaster within her private tent. She was holding a quill in one hand and a missive in the other as she sat at her humble desk, a rather innocuous sight if it weren’t for the intensity in her eyes as she watched her. Elissa had half a mind to just ignore her and continue with her plan to elicit her memories, but she knew with her luck she would end up falling asleep only to be found in a puddle of her drool, snoring away as the advisors held their morning meeting around her.

Besides, she really wanted one day to pass where she didn’t feel like she was getting belted by Leliana’s ever vigilant gaze.

Bemoaning her lack of self-preservation, Elissa turned around and plodded her way to the Sister’s tent, waiting for confirmation she was welcome to enter. “How can I help you, Herald?” she asked as if she was a tavern wench forced to attend to the town drunk. “Why don’t you like me?” she blurted out, too tired to care for small talk. Leliana sat back, a look of complete bafflement painted across her face. “I do not dislike you, Herald,” she responded as she tried her best to focus on what she had hoped to write, although failing to even remember what she had read in the first place. Elissa snorted and sat down, twisting the blanket around her to bunch up around her comfortably. “It’s true; I do not harbour any ill will towards you at all.”

Elissa tried her best not to roll her eyes at Leliana’s words but could not help herself.

“I never know with you,” she started, her eyes finally adjusting to the light and seeing all the scrolls littered across her desk. “When I first met you, you were threatening to skin my face. Call me crazy, but that doesn’t seem like the friendliest offer you could provide to someone who had just woken up in chains.” To her credit, Leliana appeared to have regretted that particular interaction and ducked her face away from Elissa’s view, emboldening the mage to continue.

“I don’t even understand what that was all about; you were perfectly civil one second, and then you take a look at me, and suddenly it’s Princess Stabbity Stab the other– woah, woah! Hey, are you alright?” She panicked as Leliana fumbled with the lantern she was trying to light, the latter hissing softly at the newly made mess on her table.

Leliana swiped at the documents and swore in Orlesian under her breath. Elissa was surprised she could understand her perfectly— perhaps she had spent a lot of time in Orlais prior to the Conclave?

“I am perfectly fine, Eli–Herald,” she corrected herself, her voice as tight as the grip she had on the bridge of her nose. “I am merely tired. I have a lot of work to do and am pressed for time, so if you please-”

“I could help!” Elissa offered, hoping that by taking the initiative that she could bridge whatever gap was between them. “Tell me what you would like for me to do, I really just want to help. I… I could even be your scribe!” she suggested as she picked up a spare quill and blank parchment, scribbling something at the top of the page. “Besides,” she continued offhandedly, “I can’t sleep very well, so may as well make myself useful before you all change your minds and put me back in prison.”

Leliana gazed at Elissa with a vulnerability that she had not allowed herself to feel for nearly a decade–a distant memory of finding her friends behind enemy bars and her assistance in rescuing them. She could feel a smile playing at her mouth as she recalled the ridiculous ploys she and the assassin pulled off in order to save their friends and leader; some people would have been traumatised by the memories, but she always found great consolation and joy in them.

“I will never let that happen to you again, Elissa,” she whispered as her eyes sparked.  The Spymaster broke eye contact first and continued with her task of lighting the lantern, though much more carefully.

“I should hope so! I literally hold the key to all that is good and wonderful in the world in the palm of my hand; we should not let it fester in a cell,” Elissa joked as she leaned in closer across the small table, still doodling on the vellum. “Do not worry, Sister Leliana; I will ensure that I am on my best behaviour around Mother Giselle so no one will have reason to imprison me again.”

“Knowing you, it will be your best behaviour that will land you in trouble,” she smiled as more memories quickly danced through her mind. “You were always one to push limits.”

Elissa’s smile faltered. Was she always one to push limits? Did that mean she had known Leliana prior to all this? Was that why she was so quick to change her tune when she realised she was no demon?

“Oh really? When pray tell, did I ever push limits?” She purred coquettishly, batting her lashes and splaying one hand demurely on her chest.

Leliana’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she sat back in her chair, a warm, intoxicating mirth settling over her as she allowed herself a moment to bask in the memory. “Oh, as if you don’t remember! Bann Teagan in the Chantry at Redcliffe, you giant flirt!” She did. She did know her from before.

Like an animal who could detect a storm coming, the Sister could feel the change in the air and quickly realised her mistake. Leliana sat up straighter, and the happiness from her face twisted into alarm, and Elissa could see as the cogs in her brain whirled ever faster to spin the situation in her favour. The Spymaster knew she had been had, lulled into a cosy complacency. She had easily led herself into the self-made trap of believing something she had only dreamed about for so many years was real, and let herself get caught as if she were one of Marjolaine’s fledgling recruits.

“You know me. Don’t you?” Elissa asked with her voice low and steady, belying the flurry she felt within. Leliana began busying herself with reorganising her desk with the best nonchalance one could muster; if Elissa was not actually sitting at the edge of her seat with anticipation, she would have given the woman more props. 

“Answer me, Sister Leliana.” Leliana cleared her throat, looked her straight in the eyes, and shook her head. “No, I do not know you.” “I did not know Sisters of the Chantry were so well versed in deception to be able to lie so coolly under pressure,” Elissa spat as she sat back onto her chair, her distaste more than evident.

“Herald, it is very late. I have many things that require my attention, perhaps if there is time before you leave for your journey to meet Mother Giselle--” “There is time now. You will make time now,” she demanded with one long index finger stabbing into the desk. “I assume you have been told that I do not know who I am, correct? That I have lost my memories?” Leliana took in a deep breath before closing her eyes and nodding once. “So you know how much more fucking terrifying this all is for me, yes? If you knew me, you could help me remember, and in turn, I would be much more helpful to the Inquisition than I am now,” Elissa reasoned, impressing herself with how well she held herself together even though she wanted nothing more than to cry. “Every second of the day since I first met you in that horrid little cell, I have had no idea what has been happening. I’ve been thrust from one shit thing to another, and I don’t even know if I have someone out there wondering if I died at the damn Conclave. Or if anyone... or everyone…if everyone I cared about died there.”

The Spymaster opened her eyes and looked upon the distressed girl in front of her, she was so young and was not yet encumbered by the weight of the world; had not fully experienced the toll of being a hero. She was still that girl that she met in Lothering all those years ago, with barely any experience in the real world and far too willing to take on a friendship with a recently retired bard-turned-Sister, even when everyone else thought she was crazy. Perhaps she wanted to be friends because everyone thought she was crazy.

“I, I knew you once... but the person here in front of me now, I am sad to say I do not know,” she replied after a minute of heavy silence. She watched as Elissa tried to work through her cryptic response before cursing and hitting the table, the noise alerting one of the guards to check in on them both. Leliana shooed him away with a dismissive wave without even acknowledging him and continued to observe Elissa.

“Have I changed so much since you last saw me then? It cannot have been too long if you say I was trying to get into the pants of this Teagan fellow you mentioned. Have I changed for the worse? Or for the better? Have I grown into my looks, or am I ugly now? Please tell me how you could know someone and then somehow cease to know them,” she pleaded before quickly clasping the woman’s hands between hers. “Were we friends before, and then at the Conclave, somehow became enemies?”

Leliana wanted to take her hands and entwine her fingers between hers. To remember what it was like in camp as they held hands like children as they looked to the stars, revelling in her attention whilst she retold Elissa all of her favourite stories. Or as they walked arm in arm down the Imperial Highway when the day was too long and they wanted to forget that they were fighting a battle of impossible odds. To talk of shoes. Or men. Of the fine little pastries and delicacies they both missed from Orlais. Oh Maker, did she want to take her hands and tell her everything, even if she did turn out to be a desire demon and she was handing over her life to live in this fantasy...

“We were never enemies, Elissa,” she whispered, beating up herself with every word she said.

“Then why, when you look at me sometimes, it feels like you’re so angry at me? Did I do something so terrible before?” You died.

“... Did you like this Teagan then? Was I not a good friend to you and tried to take him for myself?” You left us.

“... Did I hurt a lot of people?”

You hurt us all.

“I am, I – I apologise if I appeared to have disliked you from our first meeting. That is not true at all. The Elissa I knew, we were the best of friends,” she admitted, allowing her hands to slip free from her grasp.

“Then why-” “I was angry at myself, and I was angry at the Maker,” she interrupted her, voice hitching with real emotion. “I was angry that it took me so long to recognise you in that cell and then think to hope you were a demon–” “You wanted me to be a demon?”

“I want you to be as you are... but you being a demon would have been easier.” “I am really not following you, Sister Leliana–” “You used to call me Lela,” she said with her bright eyes rimmed with unshed tears. “You stopped calling me Sister Leliana one day after you met me.” Elissa could feel the fog in her mind shift, the endless hallway of doors visible for just a moment before rushing out of view again.

“Lela,” she tried the name on her tongue, and while it clashed terribly with the image of the world-weary spy in front of her, she knew it fit her, belonged to her. “Lela,” she repeated, and the haze swirled about her excitedly. She reached for the closest door to her and tried to open it, but it was stuck, but she was so damn close! She knew it! Just a little more, and she’d be able to open it and remember what was missing.

Leliana blinked away her tears and studied the scene before her; Elissa’s jaw clenched in concentration and a light sheen of sweat formed at her hairline, an alarming sight considering her state of dress and the night’s frigid temperature.

“Tell me something else, anything at all,” she begged. Leliana paused and battled with herself; she didn’t know if it was the best idea to push this but to have Elissa back, returning whole as she used to be; there would be no stopping the force of nature she was. She would have all this business with the Breach wrapped up within a year, nothing left of it but a memory. The Sister tried to ignore the voice in her head exposing the crux of it all: her selfishness. She just wanted to have her friend back.

“I used to call you Lissa,” she uttered against her better judgement.

Lissa felt right to her; she liked the idea of being ‘Lissa’, like a piece of her soul lit up at the thought of someone calling her that.

“I was the Lissa to your Lela,” Elissa ventured slowly, smiling, a blurry memory of the two of them laughing. “You said that your name sounded lovelier whenever it was said by a friend, even if that friend was Fereldan and couldn’t say it right.” Leliana choked on her breath; no one else but Elissa or perhaps Alistair would have known that.  

Elissa tried to hold Leliana’s gaze, but a sharp pain forced her eyes shut. She found herself back in the hallway, but the doors were shaking in their frames, as if they wanted to be opened, but something was forcing them shut. As they moved to open, she could make out sounds coming from each door– all in Leliana’s lilting tone. Lissa. Lissa. Lissa. Lissa. Lissa. All the Leliana’s were singing in a mismatched chorus, which grew louder and louder as the doors continued to crash against themselves.

Elissa doubled over in pain, her mark sparking menacingly as she clutched at the sides of her head. She had thought the agony of the mark was horrific, but it paled in comparison to the war raging inside her mind.

“Elissa, Elissa! Herald!” Leliana gasped, moving to her side in an instant. She steadied her head with both hands rested atop Elissa’s, sickened as she saw her fingernails starting to dig into her own scalp with enough force to draw blood. “Stop it! You’re hurting yourself, Elissa!” she croaked as she tried to pull away at her hands.

Leliana stepped out of her tent and thanked the Maker that one of her scouts was passing by.

“Get Adan and Solas at once; do not rouse anyone else and do not make a scene; do you understand me?”

The scout stole the briefest of looks between the Spymaster’s face and into the tent behind her, where the pained whimpers of the Herald were starting to grow louder. He paled and saluted her before stealthily running into the camp to do as he was bid.

Leliana rushed back to Elissa’s side only to find her slumped in her chair and passed out, her bloodied hands hanging limply at her sides with her chin lolling on her chest, rivulets of dark red streaming down her face to stain her shirt.

“I am sorry, my friend,” she apologised just low enough so no one else could overhear. She apologised for hurting her with her impatience, her carelessness. For giving in when she knew better. For knowing that she would not hesitate to do it again. For her or for Thedas.

Now she knew that the woman who fell from the Breach was none other than the Hero of Ferelden, somehow resurrected and sent back to the world to save them; as her friend, she would stop at nothing from having a chance to reclaim all that was once lost. And as her Spymaster, she would wield this information as a boon from the Maker himself. There could be no doubt now that Elissa was Andraste-sent, and with them being in the Hinterlands, it would not be long until people would start to talk about the resemblance between their well-missed Grey Warden and the new Herald of Andraste. 

She would make sure of it. Chapter 3

[houseaeducan]

@prohalla

Do you think if the origins coup didn’t happen that your aeducan would be better or worse then bhelen, harrowmont, or trian as the queen

love this question ty... it's a bit tricky with daera because she never actually planned on becoming queen of orzammar -- she's pretty uninterested in politics and always felt pretty content with the idea of focusing her energy on her position as commander under whichever of her brothers ended up on the throne. she'd play the game to undermine and fuck with them a bit as sibling antics and because you need to if you're going to last, but bhelen moved against her more because he knew that she would turn against him once she realized he committed fratricide and less because he thought she would actually contend for the throne. she could have! the assembly liked her! but the assembly liked her because she was naturally charismatic and an incredibly promising warrior, and being good with a sword and at parties doesn't translate to legitimate political ability.

if she ended up in some sort of designated survivor situation where her father and brothers were all killed then i think she'd be ??? okay?????? as queen? the biggest problem would be that she'd be deeply uninterested in it, and i imagine she would end up pushing a lot of the day-to-day decision-making onto her advisors (who in this case would probably be harrowmont so. lol.) when she actually did get involved, i think she would do Fine but not particularly challenge the system in any way. for reference, like, in her origin she told that noble guy to stop harassing the scholar guy (agkjhag its been a year since I've played the aeducan origin can you tell), but also told the scholar guy to keep the false history in the shaperate. no use harassing someone just doing his job, but it's not use rocking the boat when it threatens a noble house's pride. she was open to the idea of restoring titles to some surfacers for the benefit of orzammar, but amended her position to "yeah we should respect the surfacers or whatever but they gave up their right to be here" as soon as she learned there would be political ramifications she didn't like. she's not as much of a strict traditionalist as harrowmont would be, and is pretty open to the idea of the casteless being like, people, but i think making any actual moves to reform or push back on reform would depend very heavily on whether her allies thought it was a good move strategically

the one place i do think she'd do a very good job and maybe lead to some legitimate change for orzammar is in the military. i imagine that's where she would turn her actual sights to basically immediately (and probably spent a lot of her reign off the throne leading expeditions in the deep roads and leave the at home ruling to whoever she got into a political marriage with. kind of cailan-esque. wait.) from there i don't think it would take her too long to realize how deeply fucked orzammar really is in their current position (which i don't think she thought of particularly deeply before being put into a commander position). from that perspective, i can see her taking a much more aggressive approach to the darkspawn, and eventually coming to some of the same conclusions bhelen did about training non-warrior caste soldiers, making a concentrated effort to retake abandoned thaigs, and, maybe even opening up more with the surface for the sake of getting reinforcements, all of which i can see having a positive effects on orzammar outside of just their survival.

so i guess i would say, probably better than harrowmont and hmm, it's tough to compare her to bhelen. less of a reformer but also less likely to vindictively execute you. honestly have not thought much about trian as a ruler so I'm not sure on that! i want to say she would be better because trian seems so petty and shitty but lbr how you act with your shitty siblings does not constitute what kind of king you would be.. need to think more on that

[vigilskeep]

1, 7, & 13 for minerva and zev :D

1. describe their first date.

i don’t know if they had dates during the blight lmao but i guess they were first really together for a paragon of her kind and it WOULD be a very cute take on minerva’s love of orzammar if, while they were waiting for the wheels of assembly bureaucracy to turn, zev stole minerva away for a diamond quarter day out to make her “appreciate her freedom”. no alistair you’re not invited. they would charm their way through all the merchants and into the fanciest dinner to be found

7. how often do they say “i love you”?

when minerva says “i love you i hope you know that” at the gates of denerim, that is the first time she’s said that to anyone since she was nine years old. and zevran can’t say it back. so i think it’s fair to say these two have a couple of hangups abt that phrase. i think they actually only get used to it when they’re determined their kid is not going to grow up with the same stumbling block :’) and it’s very purposeful and stilted and charming jsgshsks

13. how do they keep in contact when they’re apart? do they write letters, talk on the phone, or simply wait out the time?

they write letters!! constantly. minerva is an administrative terror who spends hours every day writing letters and in all that correspondence zevran remains, of course, priority number one. they’re long distance a lot of the time. i think it means a lot to him actually for her to be so committed to just hearing from him, it’s part of the whole deal abt not only being wanted for the physical side of things, right? also i think they both find letter writing very entertaining, with minerva adding all the dry commentary abt everyone she knows and zev exaggerating all his exploits in antiva. also these nerds actually think making the codes they use harder to break every time is flirting. zev’s poetry is getting better

[thornfield13713]

Okay, thinking about Deep Roads logistics. An infantryman can, according to A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry here, carry about ten days’ worth of food on their person. A waggon of food per company of 30 men doubles this distance, but this has diminishing return, as waggons have to be pulled by something, and whatever animal is being used for the purpose will also need to eat something, as will the waggon’s driver. Failing this, you can bring a pack animal - the Romans often had a mule for every six-to-eight men, and in Orzammar in particular it probably wouldn’t be hard to hire a bronto - but it, too, will consume food as you travel, and will also need to be led or otherwise controlled in a party where the prospect of attack is ever-present and every member of the group will need to be able to fight at a moment’s notice. Although, assuming it remains untainted, and you are willing to lose whatever it was carrying that you cannot take with you, the pack animal can then be slaughtered as an additional source of food once the utility of bringing it along is outweighed by how much of your resources it is consuming. 

Within the Deep Roads, the main potential sources of food appear to be: deep mushrooms, deepstalkers, giant spiders and feral brontos. However, any food one finds in the Deep Roads carries the inherent risk of the darkspawn taint. For a company of already-Tainted Wardens, this may not pose much of a problem. For anyone else, you run the risk of ending up like poor Ruck. 

So, let’s break down the likeliest logistical situations for the first two games’ expeditions into the Deep Roads (I have not played The Descent, as I find it very, very hard to play Inquisition for more than five minutes without wandering off to do something more enjoyable. Like cleaning the sink. Or doing laundry. Or even working on my thesis.)

A Paragon of Her Kind

The Wardens are explicitly the only group in Thedas that ventures into the Deep Roads without a company at their back, which may mean they habitually make shorter lunges, as we’re never given the option of bringing along a waggon with food. On the other hand, Paragon of Her Kind appears to take place over an extended period - I’d put it at at least a month below the surface. Branka and her people seem to have been there for quite a while, but also to have taken long enough getting there that Laryn’s transformation into a broodmother appears relatively recent and Hespith is not yet transformed, maybe because they were a much larger group and thus by necessity travelled far more slowly, and also maybe because they did not, at first, have any clear idea where they could find the Anvil. Then again, those are exceptional circumstances, so...could go either way. And Ortan Thaig and Caridin’s Cross both feature enough deepstalkers, deep mushrooms and uncorrupted giant spiders (eating the corrupted ones seems like a sure way to end up with Ruck problems) to maybe replenish the rations it took to get that far, even if the Warden members of the party can eat the darkspawn dead at need.

So, let’s start by examining the party. I , personally, tend to organise my party for the Deep Roads as follows: Shale and Oghren for plot-relevance reasons, and then one other. This one other is not usually Alistair, as most of my Wardens want to leave someone behind to deal with the new king of Orzammar if it comes to a vote before they return or if they are killed in the attempt to find Branka. In this case, limiting the size of the party makes sense - the larger the group, the more people there are to feed, the harder it will become to feed them, especially as opportunities for forage in the Deep Roads will be extremely limited, and success and survival are far from certain, adding an impetus to leave a force behind to complete the group’s objectives even if the party sent into the Deep Roads is lost. Bringing Shale along, in and of itself, changes the calculus marvellously, as Shale is immensely strong, made of rock, and thus can both carry far more food and water than anyone else could ever hope to and doesn’t need to eat or drink anything herself. Getting her to agree to carry supplies she personally does not need is another question entirely, but most of my Wardens get along with her well enough that they might be able to talk her into it. She probably cannot carry as much as a full waggon of food, but assuming she can carry as much as two ordinary people (and this may be lowballing my estimate) and does not need to eat any of it, that’s still another twenty days of food for one person - another six days divided up among three companions. So, already, we’ve got half that month covered, assuming nobody loses their supply. The Warden has an advantage neither of the remaining two companions have, in that they can eat things no matter how Tainted they are. They probably aren’t going to like it very much, but this means that their reliance on the rations the group is able to carry with them is much-reduced, and ideally they would be primarily subsisting on what forage can be found within the tunnels, thus freeing up most of their ten days’ worth of food for their remaining companions. So, in an ideal situation with plenty of deep mushrooms, deepstalkers, giant spiders, feral brontos and the occasional cheeky nibble on a darkspawn corpse, that means that Oghren and the remaining companion now have twenty-five days’ worth of food apiece in rations alone, just from their ten days’ worth of food they carry themselves, the twenty days’ worth carried by Shale, and splitting the Warden’s ten days of food carried between them. 

Do we want to headcanon in a beast of burden, most probably a bronto? Now we’re in business - brontos appear to be loosely modelled after rhinos, and a rhino can carry 900lbs or more on its back without difficulty. Given that most of the guides I’ve found suggest you can get 4500 calories - just below the highest estimate for how much food was needed per day for soldiers in WWI - from two and a half pounds of food, this is just overkill, giving you a solid 360 days worth of food for one infantryman - 120 days spread across three. Better and better, brontos ‘require remarkably little sustenance, consuming organic material from water, fungus and even rocks’ according to Brother Genitivi. I am going to go out on a limb and say that they’re probably the principal beasts of burden used by the Legion of the Dead, who according to some of Sigrun’s lines live their whole lives in the Deep Roads after they join, only occasionally and briefly returning to Orzammar. Honestly, the biggest issue with bringing along a bronto would be the difficulty of keeping it from running or wandering off - or even outright charging - when attacked by darkspawn. This is a serious problem, as the group is small, and every member of it will need to fight whenever attacked by darkspawn, which happens a lot. Deputising someone to look after the bronto and prevent it from wandering off in Battle is a serious loss to the party, and one that may outweigh the utility of the bronto, given that, as per the first part of this discussion, the group is...actually pretty well set-up for extended Deep Roads travel without one. That said, as the Warden would not know how long the journey would take when leaving Orzammar, I could see a cautious Warden, or one with a good grounding in tactics and logistics - the sort of education either a Cousland or an Aeducan would probably have received - taking the extra precaution of securing one.

A Golem’s Memories

Once again, the logistics of the Deep Roads provide a good solid reason to have a small party, and having Shale along - as is actually obligatory in this case rather than just a good idea for plot-progression reasons - does relieve some of the burden of logistics. And this is a rather shorter journey, to boot - Cadash Thaig appears to be not very much past Ortan Thaig, which is...you know what, assuming a month underground for Paragon of Her Kind, I’m going to say that’s maybe a three-week round trip for the Warden and friends, who are, unlike Branka, travelling in a small unit, without more than maybe-one-if-you-want-to-headcanon-that beasts of burden, not being slowed down by all the many, many things that can lead to armies or large groups in the field moving slowly. Again, assuming ten days’ food apiece plus six days extra from Shale...that’s two-thirds of the trip covered even if the Warden eats all their own rations. If they are, once again, going for the ‘Wardens can eat anything they like no matter how tainted’ strategy, we rise once again to twenty-five days apiece - more than enough for everyone to be able to stay fed for the duration with minimal risk of contracting the Taint from bad food.

Last of the Legion

So, logistically, this one is starting off from a very different place. In Paragon of Her Kind, the Wardens are planning on an extended delve into the Deep Roads with no clear idea of how long it’ll take or even, really, where they are meant to be going beyond Ortan Thaig. And they were doing it with the backing of a powerful lord, one of the two candidates to become King of Orzammar, which meant that they could probably get a bit of extra support in getting provisioned for the Deep Roads. For this one, the Wardens only really know that there’s a weird chasm full of darkspawn that might be their breeding ground, and it’s an open question how long they were expecting it to take. A cautious commander might decide to have everyone carry full packs anyway, so everyone has the standard ten days’ worth of rations that an infantryman can carry (and if Justice is brought along, we also have one party member who does not need to eat, but can carry the standard ten days’ rations, to be split three ways among his companions), but a more impulsive, less cautious Warden might well decide to prioritise speed or assume that they’ll be able to forage for extra food in the field. Furthermore, it’s a much, much shorter trip. The lack of a camp mechanic in Awakening leads me to suspect that nowhere in Amaranthine is more than a day’s journey from the Vigil, and none of the main quests take more than...maybe a couple of days at a stretch. I’d say Last of the Legion has the most justification to be an extended period, as they are exploring an entire lost dwarven thaig, but even then, ‘extended period’ in this case means ‘maybe a week at a stretch’ and more probably not more than three or four days. Added to which, everyone on this mission except, at this point, Sigrun is a Grey Warden, and can thus eat darkspawn dead or corrupted spiders if they need to. 

...honestly, unless someone loses their pack somehow, I’m going to say this one isn’t even a challenge logistically. The biggest issue is if Sigrun has lost her supplies and, if so, how far this is going to cut into the Wardens’ own supplies, and that is very much going to come down to the Warden-Commander’s own preparations - if everyone has their ten days’ supply, feeding Sigrun should fit in without much difficulty. My Wardens all tend towards the more prepared side, either because they just went through a whole entire Blight and are thus very used to things taking a lot longer than they should, or in the case of Warden-Commander Andras because she’s spent most of her career in the Deep Roads and is very used to preparing for every contingency. However, other people’s Wardens might prepare differently.

Golems of Amgarrak

...this one drives me up the wall. We don’t know how deep Amgarrak lies! How far from Orzammar is it - far enough they had to spend an entire expedition looking for it, but given how dangerous the Deep Roads are, that could be anything from a week to a year! I tend to give it a month or so, similar to Paragon of Her Kind, since it’s a similar lost research lab, and because that gives enough time, between travelling to Orzammar, doing a few diplomatic errands for the Wardens there (this is, for instance, probably when that feast is held in memory of the defenders of Kal’Hirol), travelling to Amgarrak, completing the DLC and then getting back, for whoever you left in charge back at the Vigil to carry out the campaign of fuck-ups that end with Anders and Justice fleeing to Kirkwall. The actual DLC itself...I would put as taking place over...not more than a day or so. Amgarrak isn’t actually that big - it’s a research laboratory, not a full thaig. I am a little bewildered about where the researchers were sleeping back when this place was active, but then, it seems to be in a larger thaig patterned after the Ortan thaig we saw in Origins, so...apparently the researchers did not live on-site. Probably a good call. Furthermore, the place is incredibly dangerous, and I’m pretty sure if the party had stopped to sleep even once, they’d have been in for it, because the Harvester can clearly be seen wandering about outside the forge at various points throughout the DLC. Sure, it’s not attacking yet, but...it probably would’ve done the moment any invaders were vulnerable to it.

There’s no sign that Jerrik and the Warden are travelling with a larger party at the start of the DLC, so only the two of them need to be provisioned - really, only Jerrik, since the Warden can still eat tainted food. And this time, we don’t need to headcanon in a bronto, because there’s one there already in Snug, Jerrik’s bronto companion. So, see my previous calculations for the fact that...actually, these two are doing fine logistically. Snug can probably carry enough food to feed the pair of them with no need for darkspawn semi-cannibalism, and enough left over to get them and Brogan home at the end of the DLC. And given how marvellously efficient the bronto species is about food - seriously, how the fuck the Shaperate managed to selectively breed a rhino-sized species to need that little food is a question and a half all on its own - Snug’s own food requirements are going to be pretty minimal. All told, logistically this holds up all ‘round.

I am a little bewildered about the previous Amgarrak expedition, which...one would expect to be a bit larger, and have brontos of their own who are now either dead or have turned feral...but eh, not like we see much of it except the bloody, ruined corpses of those involved, so...let’s just assume a reasonable-sized company with a few brontos to carry supplies.

The Deep Roads Expedition

...oh, boy.

Origins was relatively straightforward, logistics-wise. This one...is less so.

Let’s start with the size of the group. Now, Origins tells us that the Wardens are the only people who’ll enter the Deep Roads without a company behind them. Bartrand’s expedition has...well, in-game, we’re shown a total of ten people - Bartrand, Varric, Hawke, two more of Hawke’s companions, Bodahn and Sandal, a pair of background NPC hired muscle and a single advance scout who gets beaten up by Bartrand. No pack animals, no waggons, no supplies of any kind. The Primeval Thaig is, according to Bartrand’s dialogue, ‘a week below the surface’. So, assume maybe a two-week round trip, plus or minus a few days on the site itself collecting whatever treasures might remain. Three weeks, if you want to round up. Added to which, everyone on this expedition is vulnerable to the Taint except Anders, and that’s only if you bring him along, so no darkspawn-cannibalism for anyone except perhaps him.

Thankfully, DA2 gives us an out in the form of Varric’s narration: we are not witnessing the events as they happened, but hearing a retelling of the events by a man with no real interest in the rest of the expedition beyond his brother’s betrayal, and for whom this was some years ago, filtered through the perceptions of a Chantry Seeker who...also isn’t overwhelmingly interested in anyone on this expedition outside Hawke and their companions. So, what would be a more plausible makeup for Bartrand’s expedition? 

Assuming that that thing about only the Wardens going into the Deep Roads without a company behind them still holds true...you need a company. In military terms, a company is defined as between eighty and two hundred and fifty soldiers according to Wikipedia. The National Army Museum defines this rather more narrowly as between a hundred and a hundred and fifty men, but this is specific to the modern British army, and is not a universal rule. In this case, I’d skew towards the lower number - maybe 80-100 men including Bartrand, Varric, Hawke, and Hawke’s remaining two companions. Maybe also assume three bronto-drawn waggons for additional food - that is, roughly one for each thirty men - that were presumably left behind under guard from some of the remaining men when the Deep Roads were blocked, as getting waggons through the side-passages would be difficult work, and this diversion doesn’t appear to take much more than a day.  The waggons, once what food was in them was consumed, could also be used to transport treasure up to the surface, although there is no mention made in-game of Bartrand retrieving anything but the red lyrium idol. Precisely what happened to the remaining members of the Expedition is...probably best not thought of. Bodahn and Sandal appear to have survived and made it back to Kirkwall, at the very least. My assumption, since Bartrand talks about not splitting the rewards of the expedition three ways, is that everyone except Hawke and Varric is here for a set wage per day, with the profits of the expedition being split between the partners who funded the expedition. As such, he might not have thought it was worth his time to kill off wage workers who couldn’t claim a share in the proceeds from the sale of the idol.

Now, onto the tricky part - survival in the deeps for Hawke and company after Varric has abandoned them to die. Assuming everyone at the start of all this had their ten days’ worth of food being transported on their person, it has taken them a week to reach the Primeval Thaig, so that leaves them with three days of food apiece - assuming that they were carrying that food when they were trapped within the vault, which may or may not have been the case - a soldier’s pack is heavy, and once a base camp was established they may well have chosen to leave their packs there until the retreat. According to Varric, it takes five days after being sealed in the vault to get back to where they started, by which I think he means where they found the passage that got them to the Primeval Thaig, given his next words are that it should take maybe a week to reach the surface. And, if Hawke’s sibling is present, Varric makes a joking reference to ‘those deep mushrooms we found’, indicating they’ve been able to find or been forced to find some sort of forage along the way. If the latter, this doesn’t really help with ‘did they have food supplies with them at the start’, given that it’s been a five-day journey and they wouldn’t have had more than three days’ worth of provisions on them at the start. So, yeah, food is going to have been very nearly a constant concern during this part of the journey, particularly if Hawke’s sibling and Anders are both present, and thus we need to add a day or two for them to find the Wardens and save their sibling’s life. Food could be stretched out longer through careful rationing, but that will also likely lead to tempers fraying and arguments, which are an excellent source of drama, and even once they’ve got back to where they started, there’s still a week left before they return to the surface with constant worries about starvation and Tainted food or water. An excellent survival horror narrative, if anyone wants to write it.

Legacy

Logistically, this one is much more like Last of the Legion - nobody is actually planning on a trip into the Deep Roads, nobody is expecting it, and this isn’t a group of trained and prepared Wardens, it’s Hawke and friends, so there’s no guarantee they’re carrying any great quantity of food. In fact, they probably aren’t - they were here to rough up some Carta dwarves until they quit with the murder attempts, not deal with all this bullshit. So, yeah, this is another one where food is going to be a worry. However, also like Last of the Legion, it’s a lot shorter than the previous Deep Roads trip - maybe three days? Don’t think you could do it in one, but two or three sounds reasonable. Added to which, there are plenty of deepstalkers, deep mushrooms and uncorrupted spiders. Nobody is going to be having a very nice time...but foraging is at least a reasonable option, and you can have up to two Grey Wardens in your immediate party, which also broadens foraging options.

[villainanders]

I'm back on locked tomb dragon age thoughts. I was curious as to what Houses you would assign da2 characters, or at least Bethany. I haven't played with her yet since I've only played mage hawke ( I will fix this soon) so I don't know her very well. Rn I'm thinking like Fenris, 8th (fucked up power dynamics), maybee varric fifth? since his whole thing is bucking tradition? not sure. Isabela, fourth? or maybe third or seventh? I think she'd like the gaudiness. idk I'm thinking

this is such a good question im sorry its taken so long to get back to you...

anyway for au reasons i do feel like all the hawke sibs should be from same house and I'm not 100% on that. @widgitart said 3rd which i really like with leandra's backstory (maybe she like. gave up her seat as 3rd heir to run off with Malcolm who is non-nobility from a less prestigious house but the amells never wanted to make gamlen their heir so there was a weird power vacuum until the hawkes came back to third? idk) but I'm also compelled by the idea of them as 4th house bc i think there's something thematically good with carver and beth both being so doomed so young and 4th's habit of sending teens to the front lines.

for varric i can definitely see 5th. tho honestly this is the house i know the least about lmao I'm just like hell yeah magnus and abigail house :) tho i could also make a case for 3rd and frankly. hear me out. 7th (its not that i think 7th cultural practices are similar to orzammar's cultural practices but i could see varric having a similar relationship with 7th house that he does to orzammar. very much "everyone is acting like this thing is cool. but its not its actually very fucked up!!)

fenris 8th for the fucked up potential and Sebastian and aveline both 2nd for obvious reasons (i know I'm messing up any hope of this being a canaan house au by assigning people who wouldn't be lyctor/cav pairs to the same house). i dont feel like bela is from the nine houses at all i feel like she's a cool space pirate doing her own thing out in the galaxy. hell yeah girlie.

i'm not really sure for merrill and anders. tho in my head they're both og lyctors so its kind of different. part of me wants to say 6th for anders since they're the closest to the circle kind of but then he would have been very bad 6th house member lmao. i feel like i could also see 5th but again i like. barely know anything about them lol. MERRILL is interesting to me there's a few ways it could go (i think there's strong cases for 6th and 7th) but i kind of want to say 9th since merrill practicing magic from a different tradition (as a blood mage but also generally as a dalish elf) could have some interesting ties with the way ninth is distanced from the other houses and regarded by other houses as being stuck in the past (which is. unfortunately how a lot of dragon age treats the dalish)