#he's faced this sort of decision before and chose the breach but the circumstances are so different. what will he do!!

[falloutcoys]

Hieronymous Loxlee for the character ask game!

Sexuality Headcanon: he gives such disaster bi vibes

Gender Headcanon: cis guy (though i support trans harry hcs too lol between him and sherman someone transed their gender and who am i to say i know for certain)

A ship I have with said character: harry/sherman otp but i also love the disaster polycule of imogen/harry/sherman/lark

A BROTP I have with said character: hmmm! i do not think i have one

A NOTP I have with said character: again i dont think i have one!

A random headcanon: that man could burn a house down boiling water. do not let him in the kitchen

General Opinion over said character: GODDDDDD what a guy!!!! I think about him a lot because he really is being torn in so many directions always and he shoulders so much guilt and responsibility. i love him.

x

[invinciblerodent]

Where was Tristan during the events of Inquisition? Did he ever see the Breach? Did the smaller rifts effect him in anyway?

Ooh, fun! Love this! Storytime! (man, I'd love to have the cc so I could put a header with his actual face here to break up the wall of text. I'll just put in his BG3 mockup, lol.)

(i hope in veilguard we'll get a wheel for the eye color selection because man, this is way too red. he looks far too much like a vampire.)

I don't know if the game is gonna contradict me on any of this and there are some kinks to work out still lol, but I don't think he saw the Breach- definitely not in person at least.

I like to think that, around the time of the divine conclave, he was somewhere in the north of Orlais, just about a day's travel south of Perendale. (Near the Nevarran border, not terribly far from Weisshaupt or Kal-Sharok.)

I haven't gone that far into this thought yet, but my little idea so far is that he had been traveling as a recruiter and sort of a quasi-assistant to his mentor/friend, Warden-Lieutenant Iselva (an Orlesian city-born elf mage and spirit healer). It was around the time they were about to reach the border that they both started hearing the false Calling, but it was only she who chose to heed it.

I imagine Tristan to be kind of caught at that weird halfway-point between having a death wish, and clinging with white-knuckled fists to life, which makes him kind of reckless and prone to making stupid decisions (which is why he even chose to take up arms at Ostagar to begin with), but he's also scrappy, and very much driven to survive by any means necessary (which was the reason he could cheat death in the first place).

He's not the type to bow his head and submit to the Taint, possibly not even once his time truly does come. If he is to hear his Calling (which, with how close he already is to death and how the whole undeath of everything might affect the progression of the Taint, could take days or decades, there's no knowing), he would still want to drag it out for as long as possible, stave it off while he still feels he has a Purpose, whatever that may be. On top of that, he was at that point never told what the Calling would do beyond being an annoyance, why he'd head to the Deep Roads when it starts, and, at the time, he was also barely in his thirties- though nothing about him is entirely normal, he still felt it unusual, suspicious for someone so young to be hearing it.

But Iselva was an older woman by then, a respected and high-ranking acolyte well past her 30th year in the Order. She knew all too well what would happen if they delayed too long, and was adamant that while the both of them starting to hear it at roughly the same time was odd, it was not unheard of (they had spent most of the last decade very close after all, sleeping in the same tent, sometimes in the same bedroll for warmth), and that they should pivot, head towards Kal-Sharok, both head into the Deep Roads at the first opportunity, and die with dignity, as a Warden should.

They got into a horrible fight one night, their worst ever. She insisted, he refused-- she pulled rank, he took offense, and the whole exchange ended with her calling him a stubborn fool, and the two of them parting ways: with him continuing towards Weisshaupt, and her towards Kal-Sharok.

That was the last he's ever heard from her, and though the circumstances of her leaving did tarnish her memory somewhat, he's mourned her as she deserved: as a comrade in arms, a leader, a teacher, and a trusted, beloved friend.

The road to Weisshaupt was slow going without her guidance, and he got lost on the way multiple times, so even though the fake Calling had stopped only about two or three weeks later (iirc! I'll need to check the timeline on this), word of what happened in the Western Approach reached Weisshaupt shortly before he did. Until then, he had assumed that its end marked Iselva's death- now he knows the truth, and knows that she was just another victim in this whole mess.

I like to imagine that somewhere in the Anderfels, there is still a small rock with her name, and the date "9:41" carved crudely into it, nestled between the protruding roots of a tree.

...... and as i'm proofreading myself, it seems that I totally forgot the smaller rifts lol- I don't think he ever was close enough to one to actually feel it, but had he gotten close to one, I think he would have felt an uncomfortable pull of the Fade. And, if he happened to be, say, close to death or unconscious near one, I suspect he could have gotten possessed.

I don't really think of Purpose as a fully realized presence like Justice, it doesn't live in him, but it more just kinda hovers at the edges of his consciousness. Its influence is subtle and unfocused, and if Tristan does wind up dying or losing consciousness in an unfortunate spot where the Veil is thin, it might be able to reach through.

I like to imagine that this is the reason why Tristan suffers from insomnia, and once asleep, has troubles staying that way: being too close to the Fade just... makes him feel like there are ants in his eyes, lol.