#dragonologist-phd

[chasindbae]

I had a lot of ideas of how i wanted to do this one, but one meme on @dragonologist-phd 's page, fate made it clear. Mercury is well stocked! I bet the OG Circus Perfume would heal your magic and healing but only Hidden Fantasy would do actual healing.

[milk-crafting]

Finished commission of their KC Lilith for @dragonologist-phd ! I had a lot of fun with this one heheh

[camelliagwerm]

Oh I have to ask about Valerius for the problematic OC’s 👀

OH BOY let's gooo

literal and figurative parasite by being a vampiric member of landed nobility

did not in fact study his way through university in its entirely. coasted by and even [redacted redacted redacted] in some cases

desecrated a sacred tomb of erastil's faithful to raise delamere as undead

exclusively defended corrupt nobility in legal courts who were often guilty and had no qualms about it.

offered to give vorlesh a thousand souls if it meant being the master of his own without a second thought

allowed a reaping to take place in drezen

firm believer in martial punishment for things like desertion

got frisky with camellia on her mother's grave

will make exceptions for judgement if he's sleeping with them (camellia) or they're deemed useful in some way (woljif)

a massive hypocrite

committed regicide in order to get his antipaladin magic back

got drezen excommunicated from mendev

strung sosiel along and played with his heart while the poor cleric had a crush on him

used an undead staunton vhane as a source of psychological warfare against minagho

has been living in my head rent free for over 2.5 years!! he owes me rent!!

[dujour13]

13 and 14 for Sia?

Thank you! 💕💕 These are fun

pwotr mechanics and story ask game

13. Which mythic abilities/spells would be iconic to them, and was it their preference or did they prefer something less iconic?

Siavash’s Optimistic Smile and Friendly Hug are his trademarks. Legendary. Only Derenges seem to be immune. In my recent run he has the Best Jokes feat that boosts Hideous Laughter, and it’s SO much fun. He has em rolling in the aisles. Absolutely killing it. (I have a screenshot but it’s on my PC which is STILL out for repairs so you’ll have to trust me on it, but at one point he had a tough crowd of a dozen high-level corrupted mongrels peeing their pants.)

14. What about another mythic path that they did not take? Is there one that would fit them, build or personality wise, and what might that have looked like?

The azata path is what breathed life into Siavash in the first place and I really can’t imagine him in any other mythic path, or even game setting for that matter. He would be so depressed as an Angel. Gold Dragon… hm…. but no, he’s too much of a little songbird to have a draconic form. He may be chaotic but he's way too chill for demon and I won’t even bother with the other evil paths except one.

There was a very hard contest of wills with a certain Archdevil, in which Sia was tempted to just give up and stop struggling. Putting all the responsibility on the Law instead of his own shoulders would have been a relief. It would have killed his soul to go Devil. So much that I think he wouldn’t survive it. Luckily Aivu and Woljif had his back. Short answer - no, it's azata or bust for him 🦋

[cassynite]

Ooh how about the Galfrey pov fic?

Aaaaaah thank you so much!!

Galfrey is a very special character to me, I love writing in her pov. This one is still in more nebulous stages, but it is basically her learning to acclimate to postwar life after the events of the Crusade. It follows WOTR events, so she's still queen, but she's leading a trouble country that feels like it's leaving her behind, and she needs to learn how to grow again. It also touches on her ttrpg canon ending, where she ends up Iomadae's herald!

I forgot to mention it in the meme but the tentative title for this will be "The Leaves Still Die"

Snippet below the cut!

The [sun orchid elixir] was as close to eternal youth without consequences as one could get without flirting with actual godhood. And yet, Galfrey could almost feel herself change, disconnected and unmoored from the people around her. Or, perhaps, that was simply the effect of age. Whenever she caught herself wandering down that path of thought, she would pull back, chide herself for dramatics. She wasn't that old, in the grand scheme of things. There were plenty who had lived longer than Iomadae had been the Inheritor, who remembered Old Cheliax and when the Age of Lost Omens was meant to be the Age of Glory; when there was no Worldwound, and no Crusades, and Galfrey's greatest concern was how she was meant to fill the crown her father left behind. She was not alone in her age, and only had to seek out the nearest adult elf to speak to someone who was her contemporary, or even older. And yet. When she was around others--speaking to advisors, rallying troops, leading ceremonies, presenting in parades, negotiating with diplomats from allies and enemies alike--she never could shake the ever-present sense that she didn't actually belong there. That while everyone around her was a thinking feeling being, a person of flesh and blood and passion, she was a frozen relic, trapped in amber, separated from them all by an impenetrable wall that kept her in perfect stasis, forever matching the minted coins that showed her profile from the moment of her coronation. Could that be an effect of the elixir? In some ways, she felt ancient, as implacable as the mountains. In other ways, on very bad days, she felt like the same scared paladin who had just had her god die, who had to become the figurehead of a new religion seemingly overnight, and then had to become the face of a war against an existential crisis that never, ever ended. But the bad days were the days that she focused the most on being Queen Galfrey, not just Galfrey--Queen Galfrey was the shining sun, the face of the Crusades, the leader of the fight who never backed down, never faltered. Who was never tired, who never cried or grieved or missed anyone who grew up and then grew old without her. Queen Galfrey didn't mind being frozen in amber. She didn't care about anything except making sure her country was safe, of being a good queen, and of closing the Worldwound.

[abyssal-ilk]

9 for Saar?

(from this post here!)

9. does your rook get along with their chosen faction?

not particularly, no! saar has made friends amongst the wardens (he adores evka and antoine, and he was originally an awakenings companion, so he had some of the others as friends too!), but as a whole? saar actually has a very poor view of the order. he was around for every moment the wardens turned away from a conflict for the sake of neutrality, and quickly grew to despise how they preyed upon the vulnerable and desperate to add to their ranks. every moment the first warden turned his back or allowed some horror to happen under his watch, his resentment for the wardens grew. he briefly joined the inquisition after the other wardens all fled and turned on each other in fear of their callings, and his general struggle to connect with others in his earlier years of being a warden (being a saarebas for the qun does very little for socialization, especially in a foreign land like fereldan) means he's largely isolated from the rest.

saar has a few friends among the wardens, but not many. he's somewhat idolized by the younger recruits but he's constantly butting heads with the senior wardens. it left him lacking community for decades before datv. but he has his friends now and that's enough for him!

[themournwatcher]

5 and 31 for Arias?

fifty questions for rook

5. What was life like for Rook before joining the Veilguard?

This question has already been answered here!

31. What specialization does Rook pursue? What called them to it?

Arias picked the duelist specialization of the rogue options. From a meta perspective it just seemed to fit best compared to saboteur (he does not use explosives, although it could fit a Tevene character easily) or veil archer (he does not use a bow). From an RP perspective, I choose to attribute it to training he picks up both from his Tevinter military background and a combination of goading Lucanis into sparring with him so he can hone his skills against trained assassins (he loses often).

[ask masterpost]

[undyingembers]

3 and A for Lenarius/Leonosa?

3. How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

Len loves to go to bed with a good book. If s/he can't sleep, s/he will get up to do some work or studying. S/he can sometimes be found at his/her desk with his/her head in the paperwork.

A) Why are you excited about this character?

Lot's of reasons. I love his/her design (elaborate and clean-cut with lots of body hair). I also really love that s/he is so serious and lawful, but has so many quirks to his/her personality. S/he's smart, but s/he's also a total disaster sometimes. An overachiever, but with his/her own passions.

[ammoniteflesh]

for the wip guessing game: "dark" and/or "rain"?

Thank you for the ask!

Guess a word, and if it's in my WIP file I'll post the sentence it's in.

'Hand in hand, step by step by step, Ghila and Tamlen drive on as the world grows dark.'

'There - the sky is above her, grey and clouded, spitting rain onto her forehead.'

[arainaizevran]

3 and 4 for Tane?

Yay, thank you!! <3

Pathfinder KC ask game

3. Who is/are their best friend(s) among companions and why?

Aside from Lann (for obvious romance reasons), Tane's best friends are Seelah and Arue 🥺 Seelah is so supportive of her especially during her fledgling days as a Knight Commander -- Seelah's basically her rock and trusted advisor, though they don't always see eye to eye with how dogmatic Seelah can be with Iomedae and her doctrine.

Tane's (closest) best friend is Arueshalae, who she really clicked with. Everybody else distrusted her and Tane was the only one in her corner, and Arue repaid the favour by always having her back too! Chaotic Desna girlies <3

4. What did they do before they became a crusader? Did they have a job, an occupation?

Tane was uhhh a self-proclaimed (unlicensed) monster hunter lol. It's a small-time job, not unlike Greybor's fancy dragon killing ones, and she usually only takes contracts in small villages in the middle of nowhere. Mostly to avoid people like Hulrun in the bigger cities. In the strict terms of monster hunting, she's pretty bad at it, considering she doesn't always kill said monsters -- stemming from her upbringing in Tian Xia where monsters aren't always the baddies. She makes just enough to provide for herself and her triceratops Maya, so it's not all bad, I suppose!

[bragganhyl]

2 and 19?

Thank you 💖💖💖

what is your watcher's disposition?

What isn't? 😂 (it's nothing bad just a screenshot from my last poe 1 pt)

Okay but really, I play with the conversation markers turned off and just... pick options based on her vibes and as such usually I end up with points in everything but cruelty. The top 4 is usually: benevolence, passion, rationality and either cleverness or honesty.

what is your watcher's weapon of choice?

In the early half of PoE 1, it's Unforgiven and the Hearth Harvest, in the late game, it's Steadfast and either the Unlabored Blade or Drawn-in-Spring.

In Deadfire, it's the Whispers of Yenwood and for a while Modwyr, until the end of her storyline (which Gaura ends with Xoti taking Modwyr's soul in her lantern and then she gives the empty sword away) then Sasha's Singing Scimitar and... the Whispers of Yenwood, still.

[risualto]

4 and 19?

Thank you!

4. Movie of the year? ...Um. I don't think I watched any movies this year that I can recall. Oops.

19. What’re you excited about for next year? Hm, this isn't a whole-year thing, but I'm going to see CHVRCHES in January, and I'm very excited about that!

[camelliagwerm]

25 For the Dragon Age asks?

Oh thank you. | DRAGON AGE ASKS

25. What is/was their relationship with their family like?

I'm not sure any of them have an objectively good relationship with their family. This got a little long so under the cut it goes.

Considering Magni committed fratricide and didn't even hide it, and supported Bhelen only because he wanted an Aeducan to remain on the throne, I wouldn't consider it to be a good one. Though, since Bhelen canonically won't give up on Paragon Aeducan thanks to some ambient banter during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, I guess they must have at least made up at some point and the Ferelden-Orzammar alliance must have held. He's also an absent father from all five of his children's lives, for varying reasons — Valda (his daughter with a warrior caste woman that he had an affair with prior to Origins) because she is a mostly unacknowledged bastard; Magni the Younger & Gorim the Younger (his sons with Mardy) due to duties elsewhere; Kieran because they and Morrigan are separated; and Astyth, their daughter with Anora, for her safety as at that point (9:44/45) the Reaver madness has likely begun to set in. In short, Magni has currently disappeared and no one quite knows where they are as of Veilguard (I'm hoping we'll get at least some hint of the Warden's presence, even if we don't see them directly.)

For Rosalind, by the end of DA2, the only family she has left Gamlen (who she doesn't talk to much) and Charade (again, she doesn't talk to much.) And obviously, Malcolm died before DA2 began, Carver died in Lothering, Bethany in the Deep Roads and then Leandra at Quentin's hands. And her relationship with Leandra and Carver were strained. She was forced to be the provider too young and it made her resent her mother, especially when she was told she had 'Leandra's look'. She felt like she was constantly competing with Carver when she didn't want to, and she was so overprotective of Bethany that it strained their relationship too and it got Bethany killed. Losing every one of them and then having to kill Anders turned her mad with grief, and she was only beginning to heal after she stepped down from being Viscountess. But those old wounds reopened when Varric got in contact with her about Corypheus, and she felt like she owed it to everyone to fix this. She didn't come back. Her relationships with her family were distant or smothering, no in between.

Arthur has a mixed relationship with his family. On one hand, he cannot abide his brother Percival, his mother Marina died when he was six and has been estranged from his father, Godfrey, ever since his magic flared up for the first time (when he was told Mama wouldn't be waking up again.) But he also had a loving, maternal figure in his aunt Lucille, who took guardianship of him and made all the necessary arrangements for him for being taken to the Circle and the benefits that were afforded to him as a Trevelyan, despite his status as a mage. And he was close with his sister Matilda (Tilly), prior to her marriage to an Orlesian chevalier; he and Tilly reconnect during the Inquisition years as Tilly lives in Val Royeaux with her children (husband was killed during the civil war.) Ultimately, to a lot of his wider family, his name was more likely to close doors than open them due to being a mage, until he became the Inquisitor and all of a sudden, they were clamouring to be a concerned, loving relative of his. He shut them out, and only remains in contact with Tilly and Lucille, even after Trespasser. And besides, he also gets a large, extended family in the form of the Chargers after he and the Bull tie the knot.

[dujour13]

11 and 17 for Sia?

Thank you!! 💕💕

11. For martial KCs, favorite weapon? For spellcasters, favorite spell?

Bardic Performance – imagine a guy with a guitar gently wringing the loss and longing out of your soul and filling it back up with hope - as you charge into battle.

Instrument of Freedom is his most frequent offensive spell. Kill it with rainbows!

17. Which non-companion NPC do they really like?

Sia finds reasons to like a lot of people. Some of his faves: Ramien, Aranka, Ilkes, Thall, Kel Five Knives, Fye, Wilcer, Anevia, Irabeth, Bonvar (the Andoren Ambassador), Crinukh, the Storyteller, Ciar, Kyado (sorry man), and Telmer (the guy who ate Xanthir Vang’s notes – Sia gave him a chance to reconsider his life decisions).

[cassynite]

🌙 for Sparrow?

Thank you so much!! Sparrow childhood can be. Heavy. This is one of those times.

Cw slavery, mentions of abuse, mentions of death

It's Sparrow's first night in a bed in months, and she can't sleep.

The manor house in Westcrown is enormous, a stone monolith with a thousand arches squatting against the coastline. Maybe it's meant to scare people into behaving; maybe its maze-like halls keep anyone from leaving. Either way, it's Sparrow's first night out of chains and a collar. The man who bought her took them both off immediately, scowled at the marks on her wrists and her neck. He'd finished his glare at her face.

He'd turned to one of the stone-faced servants skulking in the corner. "Those feathers will need to go," he tells them. "See that arrangements are made for tomorrow."

It was explained as sleeping quarters were arranged. She was to be a body double. She will learn how to walk like the master's daughter, talk like her, wear her dresses and dance in her shoes. Sparrow won't be able to keep the feathers she has, and her mind shies away from what that statement meant, because she's not sure she can take more pain. But she'll have to, because if she doesn't the man who bought her will send her back, to the slavers who told her what happened to aasimar stock who misbehaved. She won't be food or worse to a demon.

So she nods when the lord tells her that she will be called Eva, and tries to make the name fit in her mouth in a way that makes sense. It's hard, as hard as it is to sleep in the strange dark room. The gloomy house looms over her like a monster waiting to pounce, and the smell of the sea coming through the windows is too salty and cold. Outside, the manor shows a view of the sea under the moonlight, and it makes Sparrow ache.

The water here doesn't look like home, dark and gray like storm clouds but on the ground, not the crystal-clear perfection of the powerful frothy waves that used to crash onto the cliff shores. Sparrow holds onto that image--the bright blue of the water, the way it smelled, the deafening sounds it made as it threw itself against the coastline.

It's one of the few things she still has that's clear from before. The people who took her did something, maybe, or the sharp terror that's clawed at her mind for months now has made everything from before seem like a dream. Either way, her life from before is fragmented glass--the ocean, the coastline. The dim interior of her brother's workshop. The expression Crow made whenever he concentrated.

And, though she doesn't like to remember it, Crow the last time she saw him. The way he laid so still on the ground. How the blood pooled around his head. His dark eyes staring, sightless, at the big blue sky as they dragged her away.

She wants Crow. Every night since she's been taken she's dreamed of him, that he comes to her as a bird like his nickname, large and black with red eyes and a sharp beak that gores through skin and crushes bone, and when he looks at her she turns into a bird as well, her feathers growing to cover her whole body. And then she spreads her wings, and they take flight together, up and up and up into the sky where no one can ever touch them, and they never come down.

Her skin always feels wrong when she wakes up, like it doesn't fit right anymore.

She rubs her arms against the cold Lamashan air and then nearly jumps out the window when the heavy movement of a door opening breaks through the white noise of the sea. Sparrow freezes--is she going to be punished for still being awake, even if she's in bed?--but the figure in the doorway is her height and glows faintly with fiery light, and Sparrow recognizes the little Lady Evaethi as she trots in with an embroidered pillow under her arm and a soft fleece blanket.

Without saying a word, Lady Evaethi crawls into the bed, pushing Sparrow over with knobbly knees until she's pressed up against the wall. It's not until the little lady flops down with her pillow, blanket tucked up to her chin, facing Sparrow, that Sparrow realizes she's not going to explain herself.

"Is this...allowed?" Her voice, even hushed as it is, seems uncomfortably loud in the pressing silence.

Lady Evaethi doesn't seem to notice, her voice a normal volume that makes Sparrow flinch. "Well, you're my body double now, aren't you? That means we have to be friends, since we're going to be each other." Lady Evaethi gives Eva a wide smile and cuddles her pillow. "So we should do a sleepover. Papa won't let anyone do sleepovers with me, because he's worried about danger. But you have to protect me! So it's safe with you."

Sparrow doesn't know what to say to that. She doesn't think she can make anyone safe, not after Crow. "Okay."

"It'll be good," Lady Evaethi continues. "Papa can get angry but as long as you're good he will be proud of you. And when I'm big and strong and smart like I'm supposed to be then you won't need to be me anymore and we can just be friends then. It gets cold when the windows are still open so I thought we could both stay warm this way."

"...Okay." Sparrow thinks she's supposed to feel something at the lady's smile, but she doesn't. She waits for something, watching the younger girl drift off into a peaceful sleep, listening to the waves against the coast that sound nothing like home's.

When the sun rises the next day, and she is pulled out at dawnbreak to learn how to be a servant, she still feels nothing at all.

[chasindbae]

Passing through the alleyways of the grand city, you peer upon the wall to see a plethora of advertisements and propaganda. One catches your eye, depicting a beautiful woman with rose-like skin featuring fine earrings. "New Heartpiece Butterfly Earrings at Potema's Prizes". It looks like a new, independent shop which sells various, artisanal made dilldallery and whatnots. The font is tacky despite the exceptionally lovely tiefling depicted. A commission for @dragonologist-phd of pretty, pretty Piper, with sin like roses, eyes like silver stars, and a river of hair like a river of platinum. I had so much fun doing this and got to play with an idea I had for shamelessly making Heartpiece butterflies.