#i added some dwarven blood

[theanimangagirl]

I am trying to reignite my Dragon Age fanfic streak, currently I have 2 stories cooking ton that front, my 'main' story and an AU/canon divergence from my main. So I was just writting the old fashion way, with purple pen and all and welll, I am a danger cuz after sampling for two pages I decided to dra a family tree...

Tbh it needs some expansions and a clean up but here it is 😅

[monstersandmaw]

Snowfall - a polyamorous m/m/m fantasy story ft. an elf, a vampire, and a draugr/lich (sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me. 

I had a random and vivid dream about a draugr/lich with a secret, living in an old tomb in Skyrim and meeting a twinky, kinda foul-mouthed elven adventurer and his snooty, grumpy, (not-so-)secretly adoring vampire boyfriend. This was the result.

Daethir is pronounced 'day-theer', Nyr 'Neer', and Karsi 'car-si' (with a short 'i' like 'hit').

If you’ve not played Skyrim, none of the lore is needed to enjoy this story. It’s just someone else’s sandbox I’m playing in for some handy, pre-existing lore.

Content: Brief/passing mention of enslavement and mass sacrifice, genocide of an entire species, a tiny bit of blood and threat to life, and Daethir’s inner (and outer) monologue which includes a fair few uses of the word ‘fuck’.

Wordcount: 7589

Despite what the tattered remnants of his pride were trying to tell him, Daethir was most definitely, one hundred percent lost.

He was completely fucking disorientated in this dilapidated shithole of an ancient Nord tomb. He was also incandescently furious about that fact. 

His sense of direction was fucking legendary. He must have explored a hundred underground tombs and dwarven cities, sunk deep into the earth as well as forgotten places consumed by rambling forests, and never once had he got lost before. He’d even been to bloody Labyrinthian! But no. He’d taken a wrong turn somewhere maybe three or four hours back, and now he was balls deep in skeever shit and cobwebs, and couldn’t find the way out. 

“Oh man, Karsi must be going berserk out there,” he muttered through clenched teeth, breath billowing in the dark, cold tunnel. 

The draugrs’ strange compulsion to keep the tombs somewhat maintained for their slumbering master meant that there was nearly always light flickering in the sconces on the walls, and braziers were often found burning at the intersections of the tomb’s warren of passageways, and he found himself pathetically grateful that he wasn’t lost in the pitch black at least.

“Hold on, love,” he added as he set his jaw and tried to strain his senses for the faintest lift of a breeze in the stagnant air of the tomb. “I’m coming.” 

He hoped the vampire didn’t hurt himself trying to break through the unique enchantment that seemed to stop the undead from passing through it. Gods, Karsi had practically been spitting venom when he’d discovered he couldn’t enter the tomb with Daethir, no matter what spells he hurled at the doorway. Daethir, as usual, had slipped gleefully through in the blink of an eye and without a backward glance. 

“I didn’t even say goodbye,” he thought bitterly, and the pervasive fear of dying alone in the dark crystallised into something sharper and edged with guilt when he realised that Karsi would never know exactly how he died, and would never be able to recover his lover’s body. “Shit.”

Something moved up ahead and he froze. 

Blue eyes in the dark.

Shit.

A draugr Death Lord from the size of it, and from that ugly horned helmet.

Before he could formulate any sort of plan, hands reached out from the darkness behind him. 

One clasped right over his mouth to form a perfect seal against the scream that rose unbidden from the pit of his stomach, and the other wrapped around his waist, and he found himself lifted bodily off the floor and into an alcove.

Naturally, like the well-trained, level-headed, and seasoned rogue he was, Daethir thrashed in blind and abject panic, lashing out with his heels until a hoarse, scraping voice rasped in his ear, “Auri-el have mercy, stop! I’m trying to save your life!”

Deciding that his luck might have been on the cusp of changing, or that he was about to become easy prey for some maniac who apparently lived down there in the dark tunnels of an ancient Nord tomb, Daethir went limp. He was not put down.

For a long few minutes, neither of them dared move in case the slightest sound attracted the Death Lord who was patrolling the corridor up ahead. Like an extremely loyal but not terribly bright guard dog, it swung its head back and forth, growling and snarling to itself and adjusting its grip on the enormous ebony war axe in its right hand. At the way the light played along the black blade of that axe like firelight on oil, Daethir shuddered involuntarily into the grasp of his mysterious rescuer. 

“Easy,” the voice breathed, right in his ear. His tapering, sensitive, elven ear. 

He shuddered again and tried not to gasp for an entirely different reason this time. Funny how terror and pleasure seemed to go hand in hand for him. After all, he was dating a vampire, and the two of them frequently mixed feeding and fucking, so he was no stranger to a healthy dose of of fear lacing his pleasure. But now was absolutely, categorically not the time to start getting turned on by a strong stranger manhandling him in a dark tomb. Gross, Dae, get it together. 

The hand across his mouth was warm and leathery and strong, and by the faint glimmer of torchlight from beyond their shadowed alcove, he could see the faintest flash of bone-white flesh. Strange, but not totally unusual. People were born without pigment in their skin, after all. Heck, he’d spent an entire summer with an orc carpenter who had the most beautiful red eyes and skin so pale he couldn’t go out in the sun for long without burning. Caedrak hadn’t been able to see more than a foot in front of him, but he’d made the most beautiful things with his big, sensitive hands… 

Dammit, Daethir, pull yourself the fuck together. 

In the distance, the Draugr Death Lord huffed in irritation, then shuffled away in the opposite direction, and the figure behind him relaxed. 

“Before I let go of you, I need you to swear something,” the voice said.

It was a strange voice. Although it was as dry as the coarsest sands from Elsweyr, the consonants were crisply articulated, and it had a strange lilt to it, as though the speaker was used to the music of another language from another age. Karsi spoke a bit like that too, though nowhere near as much as this. Daethir, raised in the Ratway of Riften, spoke like a gutter-skeever with the brash accent to match. 

Still with the person’s hand clamped across his mouth, he couldn't do much to respond beyond a little noncommittal shrug, and received a dry chuckle in response. 

“Fine,” his saviour said with an evident smile, “When I release you, walk forward and do not look back.”

That… That was not what he’d been expecting. And the way the person spoke seemed so heartbreakingly sad that he felt his own chest constrict for a moment. He floundered a little, and, perhaps mistaking the movement for panic, his saviour set his feet back down on the ground. 

Slowly, hesitantly, those spider-pale hands drew back, and of course, Daethir immediately turned around. 

And screamed. 

Flailing, he staggered back into the corridor that had so recently been vacated by the Death Lord, and fell hard onto his backside, sprawled on the damp ground and staring up at the emaciated corpse of another draugr. 

Searing, sapphire blue eyes blazed out of a face devoid of all colour, so much so that for a heartbeat, Daethir thought he was looking at a skeleton, except this person still had flesh and muscle on their frame, even if it had all been withered away over time to white leather stretched over bone. 

Pale lips pulled back off perfect teeth in a grimace, and white, barely-there eyebrows tugged into a hurt expression so profound that Daethir found himself suddenly silenced by it. 

Then, because he was apparently pathologically incapable of keeping his mouth shut, he blurted, “Shit, I’m sorry, I just –”

At a croaking shout of triumph from the connecting tunnel, the pale draugr’s head twitched around and it let out a snarl of its own. “No time. Come on,” and with that, it surged forwards, grabbed Daethir by the wrist and hauled him to his feet with a strength that he would never have expected from a creature so thin. 

Unlike the other draugr he’d encountered on his way down into the depths of the tomb – the ones who’d stumbled around and dragged their bare feet along like stiff, empty Dwarven automata – this one was nimble and lithe, and it wore a loose, undyed linen shift that was belted at the waist and fell halfway down its emaciated thighs. Its feet were bare though, and as it turned and yanked him down a corridor, Daethir had to duck beneath a long, white plait that swung behind it like a flailing ship’s rope in a high wind. 

“Alright, I’m coming, I’m coming, ow!” he yelped, trying to keep his feet in the same frantic rhythm while also attempting to twist free of the vice-strong grip of the creature’s fingers. 

“Do not fall behind,” the draugr rasped, and then let go. 

“You’ll show me the way out?” he chirped hopefully, and the draugr glanced back over its shoulder. 

“I’ll take you to –” its eyes went wide and for a moment, Daethir thought the creature had tripped because it turned back abruptly and shoved him hard in the chest, sending him reeling. Daethir’s shoulder struck the tunnel wall and he let out an ‘oof’ of surprise on impact, but a second later, an ebony war axe embedded itself in the damp, softly crumbling stone of a mortuary shelf. 

“Holy shit,” he breathed, staring at the weapon. 

“Run! This way,” the strange, pale draugr gasped, and Daethir followed blindly. 

Something seemed to ripple and shimmer in the wall up ahead, and a blue light pulsed in the draugr’s hand as they charged towards the rockface. The creature seemed to be running straight at the section of wall that was warping disturbingly and Daethir’s feet slowed. 

“Don’t stop! Through the doorway, quick!” the draugr barked. 

“What doorway?!” he yelped, skidding to a stop a few paces behind the apparently mad draugr. “You’re nuts. This place has sent you round the bed. That’s a solid fucking wall right there, I’m not –”

“Come on!” the creature hissed in obvious frustration. It was unnervingly similar to the tone of voice Karsi took with him when he was exasperated, and Daethir was being stupid or stubborn (or both) about something. 

When Daethir didn’t move, and the footsteps and continuous cursing in a language he couldn't understand drifted round the corner from the fast-approaching Death Lord, the odd, silver-haired draugr rolled its eerie, blue eyes and snatched his hand again. 

With a yell of horror and surprise, Daethir was tugged forwards into the wall. He closed his eyes, expecting to be slammed into solid stonework, and was amazed when he found himself staggering right into the chest of the draugr, who nudged him to stand behind its back while it worked some kind of magic on the wall or portal. 

“The fuck…?” he breathed, chest heaving. 

The draugr, still holding his right hand, worked a spell with its left, and the doorway in the wall vanished and returned to looking like uninterrupted rock. 

“That’s never going to fool a draugr,” Daethir said, eyeing the spot sceptically. 

“Fooled you,” the creature quipped and turned to face him, releasing its hold on his hand. 

Daethir opened and closed his mouth like a landed carp for a good three seconds before heat flooded his tanned face and he looked away. “So, what, we’re safe now? And what the fuck are you?”

“Direct, aren’t you?” the creature said archly, and hell, if it didn’t remind Daethir of Karsi’s dry sarcasm.

At that thought, another bolt of guilt lanced through his chest and he looked up at the draugr. It wasn’t surprising that the draugr was taller than he was – it was hard not to be taller than Daethir, provided that one was over the age of about fifteen. He tried out his best smile and hoped it stuck. “It’s one of my many charms. Please, don’t let it stop you from showing me how to get out of this charming tomb you call home.”

The draugr’s soft laugh was like a handful of dry, autumn leaves, rattling around the narrow space that surrounded the two of them. It soon died though, and he let out a long, heavy sigh. 

“Oh no,” Daethir said, backing up a pace. “I don’t like the sound of that. You are going to show me the way out now, right?”

Slowly, the creature nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Great. Let’s move the fuck along, shall we? I’ve got a vampire waiting for me outside who will probably thrall me into complete obedience for a week for disappearing and scaring him witless, and I’d rather not make it two if I can help it. Not that I mind him thralling me, quite the contrary actually, but two weeks is a long time to spend as a puppet, even if I do get the most toe-curling orgasms out of it. Fuck, I’m running my mouth. I do that when I’m nervous, and the way you’re just staring at me like I’m some kind of hitherto-unknown species of cave mushroom that’s suddenly gained sentience is unnerving. Also you never answered my question: what the fuck are you? And are we safe now?”

The draugr blinked. “Did you hit your head?”

“Beg pardon?” he asked, and reflexively brought his hand to the back of his head to search for blood or injury in his light brown hair. When he found none, it dawned on him that the question might have been rhetorical, and he pouted. “Oh, it’s funny too. Great. I found the only draugr in all of Tamriel with a sense of humour. You are a draugr, right? Because the whole ‘mummified and still walking around’ thing is usually a dead giveaway. If you’ll pardon the pun. Man, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” the draugr said. “And yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, you are, and yes, I am.”

“I am what?”

“Running your mouth again, as you put it. And I am a draugr.”

“Oh. Fuck. Well, let’s crack on then, eh?” he chirped with a nervous little laugh, gesturing behind him up what appeared to be a narrow, upward-sloping tunnel. “Lead on to freedom, and all that. You can fill me in on the way.”

The creature gave a little snort of laughter and shook its head. Sections of white hair had come loose from its braid and dangled down into its glowing, blue eyes which gave it an altogether softer, dishevelled look. It cast a couple of glowing balls of light, with which Daethir was familiar from Karsi’s magic, and they floated away up the tunnel like dandelion puffs on the wind. 

Following the magelights, the draugr stepped around Daethir in the narrow tunnel, and as it passed, Daethir caught the soft scents of leather and parchment and incense, and the faint crackle of ozone that hovered around Karsi too. 

“You’re a mage?” he asked to break the thick silence that had flooded into the tunnel when the draugr had fallen quiet again. 

“Mm.”

“And you are definitely a draugr?”

“Mn.”

“You’re… different… from the others…” he said, inviting the draugr to expand on the statement. 

“Mmm.”

“You suddenly run out of words? What happened to Mr. Funny Undead from a minute ago? Wait, that was rude. I have no idea whether you’re a ‘mister’ or something else entirely. I’m sorry.”

At that, the creature gave another grinding chuckle and halted to look back at Daethir. “I am male, if that’s your question. My name is Nýráðr.”

The way his tongue trilled over the ‘r’ and ‘th’ sounds sent a thrill through Daethir’s whole body. “Neer-ath-ur,” he repeated, frowning. “That’s… It sounds elven, but… I’ve never heard it before.”

“It’s old,” he replied, and Daethir got the impression that there was some dark humour in his tone that was lost on the relatively young Bosmer. “If it’s too much of a mouthful for you, you can just call me Nyr.”

“Right. I’m Daethir.”

“You are a Wood Elf, are you not?”

“Yup, though I’m not the ‘live in the woods in my underwear and commune with squirrels’ kind of Wood Elf, so don’t go making assumptions.”

The laugh that fluttered out of Nyr was like ripping parchment, but it sounded full of unexpected delight all the same. Centuries, even millennia, as a slowly-desiccating draugr had wrought a heck of a lot of damage on the creature’s whole body by the look of it, and from the sound of things, his vocal cords hadn’t escaped unscathed either. Daethir mused that perhaps he would have had a voice as smooth and haunting as Karsi did when he had been fully alive, and something twinged in his chest at the creature’s loss. 

“Well,” the draugr said, “Since we’re not making assumptions about each other, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t assume I was a mindless drone like all my fellow animated corpses down here.”

“I thought I’d already made it abundantly clear that I don’t think that,” Daethir scowled. “And you were the one who implied I had no more brains than a Death Lord…”

“You were the one who thought I was going to ram you into a wall,” Nyr countered, glancing back over his shoulder. This time, as he moved, Daethir caught sight of his pale, very tapered ear and his footsteps halted abruptly. 

With his eyes wide, he stared at the elven shape of the draugr’s ear and his jaw dropped. 

“What?” Nyr asked, stopping too and turning properly to face him. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re… an elf,” he blurted stupidly, and then went on in a slightly hysterical ramble. “I mean, the name should have given it away, but… holy shit, you’re an elf! I thought draugr were all human. I mean, the Nordic kings who built these tombs were… you know, humans, and they were famous for killing everything that didn’t have a perfectly rounded ear, and they had human courts and human servants and subjects, and what the fuck?” His voice ended in a little squeak as he ran out of breath.

A slow, sad smile crept onto Nyr’s sunken features, and he sighed. “I am an elf, you’re right. Are you so far removed from my time that our story has been forgotten? Did not the Atmorans start out as our friends and allies only to betray us and subjugate us instead?”

“The Night of Tears,” Daethir exhaled, reeling. 

In the cold blue glow of Nyr’s magelight, the draugr’s face settled into a frown. “I… I don’t know what that is.”

“You must have died before that all went down then,” he said, trying to scrape together what he remembered of it from Karsi’s impromptu fireside history lessons. “Shit. It was a massacre. Snow Elves descended on the human city of Saarthal in the north one night. After years of uneasy peace, they slaughtered everyone and, rumour has it, took or locked away something of great power beneath the city. After that, the humans retaliated and began the systematic genocide of all the Snow Elves in Tamriel.”

The draugr swayed and staggered, catching himself with a hand on the wall before he could collapse completely, and he stared wild-eyed at him. “They’re… They’re all gone?” he hissed, his bony chest rising and falling in fast, shallow gasps. “There are no more of us?”

“Us?” he asked, and then he really saw the white hair and colourless skin, and he understood at last. “Holy shit, you’re a Snow Elf?”

Mute, he just barely managed a nod. 

“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I should have realised and told you more gently. Karsi would have realised what you are immediately. I’m sorry,” he said, and stepped closer, closing his hand around the bare, bony forearm of the elven draugr.

“None of us…?” he asked, unable to finish the question. 

“Not as far as I know,” Daethir said, much more gently this time. 

He squeezed Nyr’s forearm and felt the bones shift beneath, and barely resisted the urge to jerk away in surprise. Even with his small hands, he could close his thumb and fingers around Nyr’s emaciated forearm. This close up, he could also see the way his collarbones stuck out beneath the open ‘v’ of his linen tunic’s neck, and his hollow cheeks looked all the more gaunt in the blue light that cast harsh shadows down over them. Even so, there was a cut-glass beauty to the creature with his high cheekbones and elegant jawline. 

“I’m sorry, Nyr.”

The Snow Elf swallowed, blinked glassy eyes, and looked down at the point where Daethir was touching him. For a long moment, he stared, and Daethir wondered if he shouldn’t have been so forward, but the draugr gave another wheezing sigh and placed his left hand over Daethir’s and squeezed gently. 

“Nothing lasts forever,” he whispered. The sound of it was like a winter wind in bare branches, and Daethir shivered. He felt like cold hands were scraping down his spine.

“What will happen to you now?” Daethir asked, still holding onto the draugr. Nyr’s body was warm – far warmer than Karsi’s undead vampire body – and his skin was supple and unbelievably soft. He’d always expected draugr to be fragile and papery, like mildewed parchment, or slimy and rotten, but Nyr was neither. He had just wasted away over time. Daethir wondered exactly how much time he’d spent alone in the dark down here, with nothing but shuffling, insentient corpses for company, and his heart went out to him. The last of his species, and confined in the tomb of his oppressors for generations while the world went on without him. “Nýráðr?” 

At the sound of his full name on Daethir’s tongue, the draugr startled softly and offered him a smile that went all the way up to the corners of his kindly eyes. “If I am not caught in the next few days, the Death Lord will forget about all of this. They’re not terribly bright, after all.”

Daethir narrowed his eyes. “That means you think I’m not terribly bright, if I was as easily fooled as a fucking draugr. No offence, you know,” he added with a pointed look up and down at the draugr in front of him. 

Nyr’s grip on his hand tightened for a fraction before he let go and dropped his arm, laughing quietly, that autumn rattle back in his voice. “None taken,” he said, turning to continue leading Daethir up the passage. “And in my defence, you should have been able to see through that enchantment. It really wasn’t very strong. It doesn’t have to be to keep the majority of my fellow tomb-dwellers out.”

“I’m not exactly proficient at seeing magic,” Daethir mumbled. “Can’t cast a spark myself, and scrolls are… unpredictable. Even the ones idiot Nords with no magic are supposed to be able to use,” he added morosely. 

“Elves with no magic whatsoever were not common in my time, but not unheard of. I apologise. I shouldn’t have made fun of you for it.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he huffed. “Karsi is always taking the piss out of me for it. He’s pretty adept at magic – could run rings around most of the stuffy old mages at the College of Winterhold. Even the Archmage, if you believe him. He does think quite highly of himself though, so it’s hard to tell.”

After a lilting pause in which only the sound of their soft footfalls could be heard, Nyr said, “You’re fond of this ‘Karsi’.”

“Fond? Fond doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m besotted. Head over heels. Enraptured by. Enamoured of. Utterly fucking smitten.” He did his best to emulate, and perhaps exaggerate, Karsi’s refined, educated way of speaking while he rattled off a list of synonyms for ‘completely fucking whipped’. 

Again, Nyr gave a rasping chuckle. “You don’t sound terribly thrilled about that.”

“Of course I’m ‘not terribly thrilled’ about that!” he exclaimed, gesturing up in the air with his hands. “The bloke’s a century-old vampire whose more educated than most princes, he’s elegant as fuck, can talk me into a stupor in a single sentence, and is more beautiful than all the Divines.”

“How is any of that a bad thing?” Nyr asked, still sounding amused by Daethir’s petulance over the matter. 

“Well, you might have been starved for beauty down here in the dark for a billion years, so I can see why my face might look like it was carved by a devotee of Dibella, Goddess of Love and Sex and Beauty,” he said with deep sarcasm, “But if you’d seen a single other living soul that didn’t resemble the back end of a raisin, you’d realise that next to literally anyone else, I’m about as ordinary as it gets. I’m ignorant as fuck about lots of things. I can’t do magic. All I’m good for is sneaking about, cutting purses, breaking into places I shouldn’t be, and hitting a target dead-centre at a hundred paces with a tiny piece of steel.”

It was only when he’d finished insulting the draugr that lived down here that he remembered who and what his companion was, and he fell into an awkward silence. Then, because he couldn’t bear it a second longer, he tacked on an apology that was way too late. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you’re like them. You’re not.”

“It’s alright,” he said softly. The sound was like a stone dragging across the tunnel floor. “I know what I am and what I look like by now.”

“Yeah, but you’re not like the other draugr I’ve seen.”

“Oh, goody. What a comfort it is to know that I’ll win the Annual Draugr Beauty Contest for another year in a row,” he said with caustic sarcasm. 

Before Daethir could recover from the unexpected and well-deserved reprimand, the draugr rounded the corner in the steadily-rising tunnel and they came to an elaborate, carved stone door that abruptly halted their journey. 

Pressing his emaciated palm against a point at the centre of the labyrinthine tangle of patterns, the draugr let his icy blue magic pour out of him and it ran through the channels of the maze like water, flowing all the way across to form a tapestry of blue and grey until, with a dull, grinding noise, the door opened slowly outwards, and a blast of freezing, snow-filled air rushed in. 

The wind lifted Nyr’s white hair off his face and Daethir stared as moonlight inked silver brushstrokes across his high cheekbones and down his straight nose and delicate jawline. 

For a moment, neither of them moved as the night opened up around them, but Daethir knew he had to make up for his inadvertently cruel comments, so he stepped close to the draugr and reached his hand out to cup his colourless cheek. 

Nyr’s searing blue eyes fluttered closed and he sucked in a sharp breath, going rigid beneath Daethir’s touch. He traced his thumb across the Snow Elf’s high, arching cheekbone and murmured, “You really are exquisite.” He meant it too. “Thank you for saving my life, Nýráðr. I will never forget you, nor your kindness to me.”

Like a cat long-starved of affection, Nyr tipped his head into Daethir’s palm and nuzzled him once. The longing in his gaunt face cut Daethir to the quick, but he stepped back and opened his eyes. “Nor I you, Daethir,” he said in a scraping rasp. 

Then his blue gaze sailed over Daethir’s head – not exactly a difficult task, given how much taller the Snow Elf was than the diminutive Bosmer – and he smiled. “Karsi, I take it?” he said dryly. 

Daethir turned and had the fleeting impression of a figure standing beside a small, smouldering campfire outside the main entrance of the tomb, eyes blazing red, before the image disintegrated into a twisting swarm of black bats and Karsi reappeared right in front of Daethir, his face burning like a vengeful spirit. 

“By Molag Bal’s unholy blood,” he cursed, gripping Daethir by the shoulders and lifting him away from Nyr as though he were a child that had strayed too close to a firepit. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been gone?!” His tone was frantic and his eyes blazed red as he unleashed all his pent-up rage and fear. Then he turned with a snarl on Nyr and bared his fangs at him, putting himself between the two of them.

Magicka boiled to life in his hands, scarlet as blood and shifting eerily in the icy moonlight, and Daethir thrashed in his grip. “No! No! Karsi, no, don’t! Don’t! He saved my life, Karsi, don’t hurt him! Shit, Karsi! Fucking listen to me you overgrown, underfed leech!” 

Karsi’s head snapped back to Daethir and he froze, then loosened his grip on Daethir’s leather jerkin. “That’s a draugr,” he said flatly, as if Daethir had lost his wits down in the tomb. 

“Ten out of ten for observation,” Daethir sneered, looking around Karsi’s figure to meet Nyr’s gaze. “I told you he was the smart one.”

“So you did,” Nyr said dryly. He swallowed and stepped back into the shadows of the doorway, and Karsi flew at him. 

The moment he hit the threshold, Karsi collided with a magical barrier and rebounded as if he’d hit a solid wall. He grunted and hissed like a wet cat, shaking himself out and rounding on Nyr again. “Why would a draugr help an intruder instead of attacking?”

Daethir blinked. It had never occurred to him to ask that question. He really was fucking simple. 

Nyr’s lips twitched into his sad smile. “I couldn’t bear to see a fellow elf spend his eternity in the tomb of a human king who had been so cruel to our kind. Take care of him, Karsi,” he said, and turned away. 

The door didn’t immediately close, so Daethir did something that was so perfectly in-keeping with his track record of uninhibited stupidity, and darted after him before Karsi had realised what he was doing. 

The vampire snatched for him and roared in wordless fury when Daethir’s jerkin slipped through his fingers behind the impenetrable barrier and he heard the weight of compulsion in Karsi’s words as he added, “Daethir, come back here right now!”

“Doesn’t work if I'm not looking at you!” Daethir shot back merrily over his shoulder and was answered with another impotent yowl of fury from his lover. 

Nyr had stopped and was frowning in confusion at him. “What are you doing?” he asked. His voice was even softer now, as though talking so much had strained his fragile vocal cords to their limit and even Daethir’s sharp ears nearly missed the question. 

“I… I’m not sure,” he said honestly. 

“Go, Daethir,” Nyr said gently. “Go with Karsi and put this place out of your mind.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he breathed. “I… Do you have to stay here? Are you trapped by the barrier that’s keeping Karsi out? Wait, no, you just passed through it. Fuck, I’m so stupid sometimes,” he said, smacking his forehead with his palm. 

Nyr stepped closer and drew Daethir’s hand away from his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but Karsi roared at him from the mouth of the tunnel. “Get your filthy corpse hands off him! I swear by all the blood in my body and all the blood I’ve ever taken in the unholy sacrament of feeding that I will rip you apart and scatter your remains to the wolves if you don’t unhand him!”

“Ignore him,” Daethir snorted at Nyr without looking around. “He’s always had a terrible flare for the dramatic, and it only gets worse when he’s like that.”

“He’s worried for you,” Nyr smiled, and he let go. “Cherish it.”

“Tolerate it, more like,” Daethir said with a sigh. “But yeah. Do you have to stay here?”

“Look at me, Daethir. Where else could I go? I’m the last of my race, if what you say is true, and you will probably be the first and only person not to take one look at me and decide I must be destroyed on the spot.” He jutted his delicate chin towards the tunnel mouth where Karsi was pacing and snarling with bared fangs, his eyes locked on the pair of them. “He’s already proven my point.”

“Pfft, you’re not that special. He’s like that with anyone he thinks is a threat to me, and with how often I get myself in a pickle, trust me, that’s quite a lot of people. It’s nothing personal.”

“It very much is personal, you dim-witted Wood Elf!” Karsi spat, though it came out as affectionately petulant now, rather than truly fearful. “Would you please, darling, love and light of my life, back away from that thing and come back out here to join me?” Sarcasm dripped so tangibly off his tone that Daethir could practically taste it. 

He sighed and continued to ignore the vampire. 

“Come with us. If you’re not bound to this place, come with us.”

“Why?”

“See the world? See what’s changed since you went in there,” he said, jerking his thumb down the passageway. “Get away from the shitty Nords who imprisoned you in there for all eternity –”

“-- Nords aren’t shitty anymore?” Nyr asked, surprised. 

“Oh, no, they’re shittier than ever, especially to us elves, but –”

From behind him, Karsi sputtered. “‘Us’ elves?” 

“Shut up. You’re a Nord, Karsi, so you don’t get a say in this,” Daethir barked without bite. 

They heard Karsi’s inhalation of surprise, even above the wind that whistled around the mountaintop tomb. “He’s an elf? Daethir, the Nords who made the draugr would never have used elves for draugr servants. They thought they were animals!”

“Worse than animals, actually,” Nyr said with a sharp smile. “They enslaved us. We weren’t even afforded the same dignity you’d give a dog.”

Karsi fell still and silent at that and stood staring for a long time. Finally, he breathed, “That hair…” He let his red gaze slide up and down Nyr’s skeletally thin body and then added, “You’re a Snow Elf.”

With a quiet dignity, Nýráðr bowed his head with closed eyes. 

Daethir watched his lover for a long time, sensing the kind of thoughts that would be racing through that scholar’s head of his. Making a silent ‘wait there’ gesture to Nyr, he turned and went back to Karsi. 

The vampire’s eyes were unfocused, now staring unseeing at the floor near the doorway to the tomb. 

“Karse…?” Karsi truly hated that nickname because it was the word for a small, edible plant that went well with egg sandwiches in some highborn circles, and sure enough, it snapped him immediately out of his reverie. 

His upper lip twitched but his eyes faded from red to gold. That he wasn’t bothering with the glamour which he usually wore around himself like an old cloak was testament to how rattled he was. He sighed and lifted his eyes from Daethir to Nyr, who was still standing, much to Daethir’s relief, in the tunnel, watching them and silent as a silver spectre. 

“Think of all the questions you could ask him, Karsi,” Daethir insisted quietly. “You could annoy him into a second undeath with them all.”

Karsi’s mouth lifted at one corner into an amused smile despite himself. Then he looked down at Daethir and his eyes filled with tears. He brought both hands to Daethir’s jaw and choked, “You scared the shit out of me, love.”

“I know,” Daethir replied, placing his hands on Karsi’s waist. His heavy, wine-red robes were lashed around his slim middle with a thick band of black silk, into which was tucked a ruby-hilted dagger, and Daethir felt its cold bite against the bare inside of his wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m here though, and it’s entirely because of Nyr. He saved me from a Death Lord, and then when I freaked out over him being a draugr too, he saved me all over again and led me through a wall and then up here. To you. I’m alive because of him.” 

He paused and tilted his head sideways in a way that he saved for special occasions just like that one: unfortunate situations (usually of his own making) when he needed Karsi to be thoroughly wrapped around his little finger and eating out of his hand and helplessly unable to say no. 

Karsi swallowed. 

“I owe him my life, Karsi. You owe him my life. Shouldn’t we give him another chance at living too? Let him come with us…”

Karsi’s right eyelid twitched, and although he hadn’t uttered a word, Daethir knew he had him. 

He popped up onto his tiptoes, pecked the vampire on the cheek, and scuttled back to Nyr in the dark tunnel. 

He took the draugr by both hands and backed up towards the doorway, and to his surprise, Nyr followed. His movements were soft, graceful and fluid as a dancer, and Daethir thought again how strangely beautiful this creature was. 

Nyr stopped just shy of the threshold though, and met Karsi’s eye. He let go of Daethir’s hands and lowered his arms to his sides. Something wordless seemed to pass between the two that Daethir couldn’t unpick, and he looked from one to the other in helpless confusion. 

“Kay?” he chirped after a moment. “Nyr?”

Finally, Karsi drew in a long breath, held it, and then let it go in a rush. “Do you have anything you wish to bring with you?” he asked and Daethir almost yipped with the sudden rush of joy that bubbled up inside him. He hadn’t quite dared believe it until then. 

It was the same kind of excitement and trepidation he felt at the start of a new journey. No matter how many times he and Karsi had set off to find some new book or scroll or sacred offering pot, he felt the exact same flare of unbridled, effervescent joy, and now as he looked between the two undead creatures before him, he felt it again. 

“If I go back down there now, I will not come out again,” Nyr said in a barely there rasp. “The Death Lords will all know by now what I did, and how I betrayed them to get Daethir out. They will forget in a week perhaps, but I would have to conceal myself, and Daethir would freeze to death up here waiting, even with a fire.”

Daethir paused and watched Karsi’s expression as the realisation dawned on the vampire of the risk Nyr had taken to get his lover out alive. Then, he surprised Daethir by raising the inside of his left wrist – the side closest to his now-silent heart – to his canines and biting his own vein, sending droplets of his precious blood spattering onto the snow rimed stone at his feet. With ritualistic intonation, he said, “You’re right. I owe you the life of my beloved. By my blood I swear to do you no harm, and to protect you to the best of my abilities until my death or such time as you release me from my oath.”

Daethir’s eyebrows shot up. He’d never heard Karsi speak like that, and he’d certainly never given a blood oath to anyone, not that Daethir knew of anyway. Astonished, he looked at Nyr. 

The draugr stepped out of the doorway and around the small pool of blood that sparkled like a handful of rubies cushioned on the snow. He tilted his head slightly to one side, and smiled. “I shall do my utmost to be worthy of such an oath, vampire.” The word came out like an honorific, not an insult. 

For the space of ten heartbeats – twenty, if Daethir’s pounding pulse was the cadence by which such measurements were to be judged – no one moved or spoke. Finally, Karsi turned away and walked towards the fire, his long black hair blowing loose in the wind. He looked softer now, the tension melting from his shoulders, but Daethir knew his lover to the core, and he still bore some internal struggle. 

Daethir made a mental note to question him about it later, and then turned to Nyr. “Where to now?” he asked. 

“I will follow where you lead, Daethir.”

At that, Daethir sucked air in through his teeth in a comical grimace. “Terrible choice,” he grinned. “Luckily for you, I follow where Karsi leads, and Karsi is full of excellent ideas and great judgement.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Karsi said over his shoulder as he stalked six paces ahead of them. “I just gave a blood oath to a draugr. You’ve rotted my brain with your company, Dae.”

Daethir grinned again and elbowed Nyr in his ribs. “You’re gonna fit right in, I just know it.”

Nyr smiled faintly and it was only then that Daethir realised that the draugr was still wearing just a linen shift and no boots. 

“Shit, Nyr, you must be freezing!”

“I’m not going to die of exposure, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Karsi snorted faintly, looking surprisingly amused until Daethir told him to take his own coat off and give it to Nyr, which he flat-out refused to do. 

“You can’t expect him to walk around barefoot, Karse!”

“He can strip one of the bandits in the entrance for armour,” Karsi shot back, gesturing at the main door to the tomb. “It’s not like they need it. I swore to protect him, not divest myself for his comfort.”

Without a word, Nyr left in the direction Karsi had pointed, and a few minutes later, he returned wearing the black mage robes of one of the frozen corpses just inside the door, with a long fur-trimmed cloak that caught the wind and flapped like bat’s wings, and tall, black leather boots cuffed with soft fur. The cloak had a hood, which he pulled up over his head, and with the shadows it cast, he almost looked unremarkable save for that long, silver braid that hung elegantly down over one shoulder. With those new clothes on, he looked thin, yes, but not undead. Until Daethir met his blue eyes. 

“Karsi, can you cast a glamour on him or something? Like the one you use? He shouldn’t have to worry about every last person we meet trying to hack his head off.”

The vampire nodded, and crossed their frozen campsite to meet him halfway. “If I may?” he asked, raising his right hand. Black and red magicka bubbled into his palm and Nyr eyed it warily, but nodded once. 

“I can do it myself,” he added, “But I think you’re a stronger mage than I, and you have more experience with alteration magic, I’m sure.”

Karsi just grunted something and circled his fingertips over Nyr’s face. In place of the haunted, sunken eyes and gaunt, hollow cheeks of a corpse, a beautiful, porcelain face stared out from under the hood, and the undead, blue glow of his eyes faded to the forget-me-not blue of a wild meadow in summer. 

“Holy shit, Karsi,” Daethir exhaled. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

The vampire rolled his eyes and cast the same spell on his own face, and the black sclera faded to white, and the gold deepened to a warm brown, and Daethir tried not to mourn the loss of the ‘otherness’ in his two companions. 

“Karsi?” 

“Mn?”

“Can you… Can you make it so that I can see you both?”

“Without affecting the way others view us?” he clarified, and Daethir nodded. He looked to Nyr for his opinion, and when the draugr just shrugged, seeming almost curious about whether such a clause could be written into a spell like that, especially after it had already been woven, Karsi took it for the challenge it undoubtedly was, and made another gesture at the side of Nyr’s face. 

The face of a draugr stared back at him once again, and Daethir beamed. “I fucking love magic,” he laughed, and to his surprise, Nyr laughed too, shaking his head. “Do you mind? I mean, I was pretty rude about draugr a while ago, but I really didn’t mean to include you in it.”

“What, when you called my kind ‘the wrong end of a raisin’ or thereabouts?” he said, arching an eyebrow. 

Karsi burst out laughing, and the sound was so loud and honest and off-guard that all three of them began to laugh. It took a lot to make Karsi laugh like that, and the sound of it filled Daethir’s heart to bursting. 

He looped his arm through Nyr’s elbow and then dragged him round so he could stick his other arm under Karsi’s, and he dragged the two of them towards the fire and their discarded travel packs. 

“Come on,” he said, glancing up at the two of them. They were almost a match in heights, he noted from about a foot below them. “Let’s put this place behind us. Karsi, what was the next item on our list?”

“The Lunarstone Chalice,” he said dryly. “Last rumoured to be in a ruined temple in the mountains north of Markarth.”

“Ooh, Markarth. My favourite place in all the world,” Daethir chimed sarcastically, unlinking both arms so he could gesture grandly while walking backwards. “Second only to Windhelm in its snobbery towards elven kind, and the whole area is bristling with rabid, frothing lunatics called the ‘Forsworn’. Can’t think of a place I’d like to start Nyr’s tour of Tamriel more than bloody fucking Markarth.”

And then he caught his heel on a flagstone and pitched backwards with a sharp cry of surprise, only to find hands shooting out to catch him on either side. 

Nyr and Karsi hauled him upright before he landed ass-first on the icy stone, and Daethir grinned up at both of them.

“Alright,” Nyr said in his hoarse croak. “Let’s begin.”

__

If there's interest in these three, I'll happily add it to my 'to work on' list. Consider letting me know you enjoyed it by reblogging it or leaving a comment/ask.

Take care of yourselves, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

| Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar)

(if you enjoyed this draugr/lich boy, you might also like this story, featuring an altogether more shy and retiring draugr named Kalle, and the adventurer who falls in love with him over several visits to his tomb - m/f pairing).

[exhausted-archivist]

Lore: Titans

What we know about titans is little and sparse pre-DA4. Somethings that we do know about them are:

Also known as "the pillars of the earth"

They created the dwarves, they are potentially "The Stone" that dwarves refer to.

Alternatively the titans themselves are children of "The Stone", but created the dwarves. They consider the dwarves to be their children.

Lyrium comes from titans, it is considered to be their "blood".

The titans emanate a song from lyrium, it is different from the Blight.

Titans use earthquakes to shape the earth, they also previously used "Shapers" to carve valleys into the earth.

Their size is so vast it is impossible to describe it according to Valta. They're large enough to support life within themselves, from plants to dwarves like the Sha-Brytol.

Titans enable the dwarves to have a hive mind connection with it and others.

History

At least one titan has been killed by the Evanuris - specifically Mythal. Though it is suggested that it was multiple titans.

Ancient elves mined the bodies of titans' for lyrium, but out of fear, they eventually sealed them with stone and magic. They cited that "what the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would destroy all in its anger."

Before the Dragon Age, the last time a titan was known to be awake was -1170 Ancient. Before the fall of Arlathan and before the First Blight. Both instances were the same titan.

After -1170 Ancient there is no mention of the titans in Orzammar's memories. Though there are two texts that mention titans, they predate the First Blight.

Orzammar became the capital of the dwarven kingdom after the titan awoke in -1170 Ancient.

Known Titans

We only have the confirmed location (specific or general) of two titans.

Heidrun Thaig - it is the focus of the entire Descent DLC

Orlais - It is a super general and non-specified location but it is mentioned on the handle of Tug's axe that "The Stone lives beneath Orlais." It is also mentioned by the Nexus Golem in da2 in the Abandoned Thaig. Given that the stone is a reference to titans, we know there is one somewhere in Orlais.

Theoretical Titans

These are locations for titans that are mostly theory and locations I've seen others in the fandom talk about.

Temple of Sacred Ashes - I have seen this one floating around and I have some doubts. Mostly since we don't really know how big titans are, we can't rule out that it is the same titan as the one under Heidrun Thaig. Which, considering they can cause earthquakes and are described as impossibly vast, more so than a giant or a high dragon, they're erring on the side of large for sure. Coupled with Valta saying she wanders through the body of the titan for an unknown amount of time and hasn't seen all of it, only adds to just how inexplicably large it is. Along with that, if you keep with the scale of Ferelden being the size of England then from the thaig to the temple is only a 16 day journey (240 miles/386.24 km). Adding on the scaling math I have for the depth of Heidrun - being deeper than Mariana's Trench - the Titan could very well stretch that far.

Primeval Thaig - If this was indicative of a titan location, let alone being tainted, I feel that there would have been a discovery of red lyrium so much sooner. We know how infectious that stuff is, how impossible it is to destroy and how rapidly it grows. Not only is the thaig not deep enough to be directly connected to the titan, but it was completely sealed off to prevent it spreading. That said, I do think there is a possible titan under the Vimmark mountains. So far the only titan we have a definite location on is underneath mountains. Considering they cause seismic activity, I can definitely see one slumbering under there.

Anvil of the Void - This one does seem a bit plausible to me depending on where you put the thaig. This post by @/wyrdsistersofthedas explains the plausibility quite nicely. It is a bit tinfoil-y as is anything about dwarves and titans at this point. Especially when the source is dao and with how much BioWare has set aside in terms of lore. In essence though, Cariden's anvil is connected and supplied by a massive lyrium vein. His anvil and its location is also the only location where the creation of golems has resulted in functional creations. The rest went wrong or were driven mad in some way. The golems Branka is making from the Casteless in DAI if you give her the anvil are still consistently failing.

Sternann Peak, Anderfel - There is a lyrium mine out here near the town of Geltberg. Which also implies that there is a thaig as well. Whether this is run by Orzammar dwarves or the Carta is unclear.

Beneath the elven crossroads - The lyrium mines in Trespasser might be connected to an entirely different titan or the aforementioned titan beneath Orlais. It is unclear where the the spaces you go through the crossroads even are.

Cryptic Comments From Cole and Keiran

Cole

"It's singing. A they that's an it that's asleep, but still making music."

"Their ancient shapers were mountains drawn of all their wills, walking their memories into valleys of the world".

"They made bodies from the earth, and the earth was afraid. It fought back, but they made it forget."

Keiran

"But you can't be taller. Not without the titans."

Titan Tidbits and Theories

Cole implies that templars have established a connection with the titans through their use of lyrium when asked for his opinion on the templars. Solas also echos this by describing how templar abilities work, that they pull in the reality of the world around them to shut out magic.

Though this doesn't quite explain Seeker abilities, the use of they lyrium brand and the touch of a spirit may forge a different kind of connection.

Cole comments on how "They (ancient elves) made bodies from the earth, and the earth was afraid. It fought back, but they made it forget." This suggests that maybe the original elves who are implied to be originally spirits, made bodies out of the titans (earth) and that this is one thing that instigated the war between titans and the evanuris. Though this is a speculative interpretation of what he means.

In the tabletop it is implied that in the past, the thaigs were carved from living rock - potentially the titans.

The dwarves of the elder days filled the thaigs, large open caverns beneath the earth, living in great cities carved from the living rock.

Adding to the above point, we see two instances where the old gods' prisons were under/nearby dwarven thaigs. In the Shimmer Stone Mine in the Western Approach and the Dead Trenches near the Ortan Thaig where Urthemiel amassed his army. If the oldest thaigs were carved from titans, it brings to question if the old gods were buried before or after the dwarven kingdom started building their thaigs given the "newer" thiags are above the old god prisons, and the prisons are above the titans.

If the old gods were buried after the start of the dwarven kingdom, which would be after the fall of the titans, it brings to question if the old gods are connected to Arlathan and the founding of the dwarven kingdom, and if this was one of the relics of the ancient dwarf and elf emipire collaborations mentioned in the tabletop that was forgotten about. Sandwiching them between titans and thaigs for safeguarding.

[midmorninggrey]

Hello Grey!! How about 4, 23, and 24 for the OC asks?

Hey Ad! Thanks so much for the asks!

[OC Ask Game]

4. A character you rarely talk about?

My HoF, Anika Aeducan! It's honestly because DA:O crashes all the time on my laptop, so I haven't played for a long time. I've always found the dwarven lore in DA to be super compelling, and while I've seen a bunch of kickass Broscas, the Dwarven Noble origin will always be my favorite. It's such a fall from grace!

Anika is also the most "stoic" of my OCs, which makes her a bit of a challenge. Alistair can never tell if she's joking or not.

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?

Answered here!

But I'll also say that Magaleth started as a Surana OC, and then I tried to make her a Lavellan. Loran started as a DA:I City Elf Companion OC, and then he was a Tabris for about a week. Now they are disasters together!

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?

I don't want to meet any of them, honestly. They are all a little frightening (or, they're scary because I know what's inside of their heads?)

I think I'd meet Magaleth? She's a blood mage with limited morals, but I think she'd have some good advice.

[opheliajupiter99]

Dr. Sawbones Pt.3 (OUAW Horror)

"Wake up sleepyhead!"

Gideon only just barely heard the voice, too lost in a deep mind-fog after a fight he couldn't clearly remember. He was smacked with something cloth and stuffed, right across the face, which finally stirred him awake, blearily opening his eyes.

Stood before him was a young dwarven girl, her tan dress stained with blood, long brown hair flowing down her back, wide emerald eyes and a wider smile, and clutched in one hand a ragdoll, dressed in a black and white striped prisoner's jumpsuit.

He blinked in confusion. He tried to stand, as he quickly noticed he was seated, but just as quickly found he could not. He looked down, seeing he was in a hefty steel chair, the chains on his wrist directly fused to the arms of the chair, as well as metal straps around his arms and legs, ensuring that even if he could get out of the chair, he wouldn't get out unscathed.

He also noticed he had an IV in, that's tubing connected to a system that also had what appeared to be some kind of sprinkler system, that hung above his chair. The little girl giggled. "Bout time ya woke up, silly! Was gettin' super bored. Can we get started now, papa?" She said, turning around and looking up at a window at the very top of the towering room, seeming to be some kind of surgical viewing point.

The dwarven man, that the Genasi could barely see beyond the thick glass, nodded. The girl giggled gleefully. "Yay!" She looked back to Gid, those wide eyes full of bloodthirsty joy. "Papa's never let me torture somebody before, hehe!" Gid blinked, his disorientation from whatever was used to knock him out only adding to his confusion.

"The fuck is goin' on? How'd I even...let me fuckin' go! Now!" He yelled up to the window, the girl just giggling in response. "Stop fussin' Gid! We just wanna play." She said with another giggle. Gideon opened his mouth to scream once more, but his gaze quickly darted towards the girl. "Aye, don't call me that! Only-" "Only Kremy can, mhm?" She said quickly, finishing his words. Gideon's eyes widened a bit. "Mhm! We know lots and lots about ya guys!"

The man above pressed a button, both turning on the overhead speaker and connecting to the audio of another surgical wing, allowing the agonized shrieks of a certain Bugbear to ring through the room Gid was housed in. His eyes darted around at the screaming. "N-No-fuck, how...Torbek!" He tried to shout out to the man in a panic, but all he got in return was more screaming.

He started to thrash about in his chair, not getting it to budge, as on top of everything else, it was bolted to the floor. It was clear the chair was built for ones of immense strength. The girl seemed even more gleeful at his attempts, grabbing a nearby controller and turning a dial on it.

Once she did so, the torture device activated, both turning on the sprinkler system above him, and begin to flow liquid through his IV, both dispensing highly concentrated enchanted water onto the Fire Genasi, internally and externally. He howled in agony, as both the girl and the man aboved howled in delight.

Eventually, the girl turned the device off, likely only lasting a few moments, but it felt like a year to the poor man. Both screams were silenced as the man above turned off the connection to Torbek's room, the Genasi sat there, catching his breath.

"Silly toy - ya know not to misbehave now?" The girl questioned, Gideon snarling in return. "Fuck no! I'm gettin' outta here, and I'm gettin' Torbek out too!" The girl just giggled, gesturing to his wrists. "Ya chains are fused, silly, ya'll bleed out before ya get anywhere!" Gideon huffed. "I don't fuckin' care! I'll ride a fuckin' adrenaline high to get us out, I don't care if I die after! I'd be fuckin' proud to!"

The speaker crackled to life, this time displaying the man above's voice. "Pumpkin, could ya give our guest a bit more insensitive? That special doll I gave ya?" The girl looked up to the window and nodded, mischievously giggling as she ran over to a far table. Gid's brow furrowed in confusion, until the girl returned, and he went pale.

The girl held in her hands a bundle of needles - and a Kremy ragdoll. A wide, sadistic grin grew across the little girl's face as the horrified realization fully spread across Gideon's face. "Ya see, Gid," The man across the speaker began. "Everytime ya fall outta line with what I want, my darlin' lil' Pumpkin here'll get to play with that doll. And ya know, she's never been too nice to her toys." He chuckles darkly.

Gid looked between the voodoo doll and the girl for a moment, eyes wide, thoughts darting around; maybe it wasn't real? But if it -was- real, then...then he could get Kremy killed. He'd die without even realizing what happened, and he doubted in the hands of these lunatics he'd die fast, and when he got to the Baron, he just knew the Baron'd be more than happy to tell him -why- he died...

"F-Fine! Fine, a'ight...I'll behave." He sighed heavily, hanging his head. The girl squeaked with glee, running off towards the hefty metal door of the room. "Good job, Pumpkin, couldn't a done it better myself." He said in a fatherly tone, which was quite whiplash contrasted with his tone with Gid, the metal door sliding open to let the girl exit, before closing firmly once more.

Leaving Gid in pure, icy silence...

[tithnamath]

What my OC (Original Character) Would be in the Hobbit

note: part 2 of my comfort character analysis will be up either next week or the week after :)

Hello dwarflings and wandering travellers, let's get into what the title suggests then, don't we? I have many, MANY, versions of my OC in the Hobbit events (this what happens when you daydream too much haha), so I will summarise my top 3 they are. This excludes the concept of me or a human alternative of me in this world no clipping into Middle-Earth. Also, all of these characters will have the same name, just variants of each other (like in Loki). Enjoy :)

Name: Elenora or Elli. With the Dwarrow OCs she is nicknamed Tith (meaning little) by everyone.

3rd Place: Half Dwarrow, Half Human

Eyes: dark blue

Hair: long, wavy, dark brown almost black with strains of blonde at the front

Stature: height of a taller dwarrow (around 4'9-10") with the average human figure (not too slim but not stocky like a dwarrow)

Age: 56

I can picture this OC arriving into a tavern (most likely the prancing pony) after coming back from the Blue mountains in search of her father who she has never met before. She comes across the company in the tavern, surprised that a female Dwarrow has been spotted in the wild, and even rarer a half Dwarrow. She says she is looking for her father of Ereborian decent, who is residing in either the Blue mountains or the Iron Hills. With no luck in the blue mountains, and to Thorin's distain, she joins the group as Erebor in the same way as the Iron Hills. Little does she know that her father is in the company, as unaware of their relation as her. (I know who it is but don't want to spoil it hehe).

2nd Place: Half Dwarrow, Half Elf

Eyes: silver

Hair: long like an elf but thickness of a dwarrow; mousy brown/dirty blonde

Stature: around 5'1" so she appears more like a short human, but looks off as she has elven and dwarven attributes.

Age: 550-570

Her parents were murdered for being in a forbidden relationship. Along with OC's baby brother they were murdered by a group of elven and dwarven rebels who couldn't accept the fact they were in love and had 'contaminated' their blood by having kids. OC escaped and came across Radagast's hut to hide in. She then raised by him and occasionally Gandalf as well before becoming a orc/goblin/troll hunter and ranger. She is then asked by Gandalf to join the company as a guide (and protector). Unbeknownst to the company, a legendary dwarven folklore about an elf, a Dwarrow, and a missing child is actually the OC.

1st Place: Dragon Tainted Ranger

Eyes: one red, one yellow

Hair: short, wavy, black and red (like Karlach with a bob)

Stature: average human height who has a lean and athletic build.

Age: unknown but appears to look in their early 20s

Gandalf the gatekeep has been hiding and training who is quite possibly the last of the dragon tainted bloodline in Middle Earth. She is known as his 'apprentice' who is trained in heat and fire manipulation. She is added to the company, who some of them (I'm looking at you Thorin) are highly vocal with their disapproval. Gandalf tells them that she is the only one who can kill Smaug with her magic abilities - just leaving out the fact that she is quite possibly a distant cousin to Smaug.

[maehem-1]

Worldbuilding rule to live by: If you like something, put it into your world. I wanna ramble about how I've lived by that rule in the current world I use for my DND games. This is also the flagship post of my personal DND tag! It's a long one, enjoy my ramblings!

I've created many homebrew items based off of Guilty Gear. My favorite is my adaptation of Ky's Thunderseal. I also managed a decent adaptation of Sol Badguy as a PC (I think PSI Warrior is a good subclass for him… actually, that gives me an idea. What if Psionics isn't a natural thing, like becoming a gear? Like if you have psionics it counts as a different creature type. That'd be so much more dramatic/impactful than “magic but different”)

Speaking of Ky's Thunderseal, it was wielded by someone important in my world's history: my Jetstream Sam stand-in, because I love MGR:R. I also have his murasama, mechanical arm, and chin guard thing as items discoverable in his tomb. The arm? I was reading Beowulf at the time, so you can use it to rip someone's arm off. It's dope.

Dwarves. I love me a good Dwarven mountain home. Dwarves are a really well developed part of my world, though it's not very unique because I LOVE the classic dwarf archetype. Grudges, ale, and forging, baby!

On that note, Hobgoblins. I love a wandering hobgoblin legion, remnant of a Hobgoblin Empire. This stems from Jort of the Order Undivided by The Bard Ilthari. Unfortunately, for all my love of the bright nosed folk, in my current game I've devolved them to lowly slavers of Goblins, without much hope of increased complexity like Jort gave them, since, well, I feel like I leaned too hard into the cruel slavery thing too fast and it's hard to come back from that. If they lean into the

A lot of my favorite DND things stem from Order Undivided, I also have a Senket analogue npc, and my dwarves are mostly modeled after Kazador. I've been working on an arcane Oath for Julian. I also love Gnolls quite a bit, and learned up on Yeenoghu to possibly use as a villain. Hell, my love of tactical heroic play stems from the paladins being able to defeat much greater numbers by gathering allies and taking tactical positions. I long for the day I play a game where I command armies like the Warmaster himself.

I'm a big fan of Mathew Colville, and NOT a fan of dealing with worldbuilding other Planes, so I stole his concept of the cities of Hell and slapped it on my material plane! Also makes it easier to port the Illrigger class into my world's normal rotation. Ditto for my interest in the Underdark, though I think I'm closer to forgotten realms than he is. I also stole Count Nekodemus of Castle Rend, though only in name. Mine is Baron Orwell Nicodemus, and he's a Tortle (and a little bit of an asshole, in the bureaucratic sense). I think I just like the name :3

I've loved smash bros for a really long time, since I was twelve playing Smash 4. I recently got into it again, both through videos about the history of the competitive scene and by playing Ultimate again after so long. This, of course, led me to the Five Gods of Melee. Suddenly, I had an idea for the pantheon I've been putting off structuring. Five Gods, chosen by competition between all lesser deities called Representatives. (I thought it sounded cool). Each representative also gets two associated damage types, and I'm considering adding some bonus related to them (maybe the cleric can replace their spell's damage type with one of those types instead? Incompatible with channel divinity to avoid tempest cleric shenanigans?). If this turns into a slay the gods campaign, I'm definitely going to lose my mind because none of my players would understand Leffen jokes

One of the only Representatives I've come up with, an idea I've had since the beginning, is basically a god of bloodsport/gladiatorial competitions. I decided to model them off of Technoblade, as a memorial to the Blood God himself.

I love the old traditions of DND. All that dungeon crawly, noodly bullshit. Love it. I make sure to have a lot of dungeons in my world, and am always prepping more my players will probs never see. I've also way expanded my world so that it's much more of a points of light setting, though my players are in the most densely populated area (due to being the only place that existed before geographical expansion) I also need room to improvise new locations. I love my current “canon,” but that just hurts my ability to say “there's a mountain way over there that has a ___, ___ and ___, because… that mountain should've been on our map, no? When you map the whole world, it gets so very small, doesn't it?

Legend of Zelda. My old world had a bit more of it, but I try to incorporate Zelda dungeon design into my dungeons when I can.

When I develop my Underdark better, I want to include a lot of Hollow Knight inspo. The Drow wearing masks, stuff like that.

Really this has just become a ramble about my DND campaign world and I love it

I frequently give creatures multiple creature types. Oozes are also aberrations, many Gnolls are also Fiends, etc. As I just came up with a half hour ago, Psionics characters would get a second creature type, what to call it yet I don't know.

Elves. Hooo boy. I'm not a fan. They live so long, it's too hard to create ancient history with them around. Which is, honestly, the entire appeal of elves. The reincarnation/ embodiment of living history aspect is the only interesting angle I can find personally. Whenever someone wants to play an elf, they never want to lean into the Elrond of it all. They just want to play a taller human, usually with a bow and arrow. So I don't have Elves. Simple as. Of course, they do exist, they're just incredibly rare. They were driven off the mainland for ~reasons~ and hang out on this island made entirely out of trees. Mostly old ass elves and really young ones (born on the island) are still alive, with very few survivors of the between generations. Lead by a Baelnorn, ‘cause they're cool. Drow are the exception, because they're also cool, but they're rare on the surface for different, more obvious reasons. If someone ever tells me they want to play an elf, I'll publicly decline the offer, then catch them alone and give them the lowdown. Half Elves know nothing of their elven heritage, since it's been so watered down by now, though they still get mechanical benefits.

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Hey Pax talk more to me about fantasy computers plus 👀

HI HELLO i posted that snippet and that call for discussion and then promptly got distracted, went to bed, and forgot to check tumblr pretty much all day. i wasnt sure id have much to say on the matter but i ended up rambling only half-coherently so <3 no hard feelings if its Too Much to read, let alone comprehend. im not proofreading it myself so good luck and thank u for prompting me to ramble <3<3<3

BUT

FANTASY COMPUTERS

aka normal real-world computers shoved into classic high fantasy land because i like to fuck with genre expectations like that. except like cyber/solarpunk future computers because again. genre is fake

anyways. the goblins of the ehlverse are a) the only people without either a magic source (see: elementalism, human blood runes, dwarven metallurgy, etc) or an inherently magical biology (see: dragonkin being literally made of magma, shara'i being feathered and mammalian and terrestrial and eyeless a la moles, etc) AND B) have been thus excluded from much of the world's politics and power due to magical inability for literally tens of thousands of years

so of course they invented computers and robots and sustainable electricity and gadgets and such that are capable of not only emulating certain commonly useful aspects of magic, but also of doing things no magic can, just to keep up

something that i've had in mind while building out the stories in the ehlverse (mainly TMS but it impacts whispers too) is the like. meta level of How the World Works. and technology like computers and such being a big huge useful innovation in real life!! and how to justify only the goblins and a scattered few other people around the world actively using them. and how politics and superstition and practicality for the majority all intertwine into the situation as it is in TMS and whispers

and like. a lot of the politics on ehl are like normal politics with magic added to the resources/skillsets of certain groups. so like that shit impacts trade and warfare heavily and it's basically useless to ally with another political entity that has nothing to offer you of the most important thing in the world, right? and so when it comes down to it, half of why computers aren't nearly as widespread as they could be is because the people in power in a lot of the world simply don't care to start trade negotiations for things that scribes and scrupulous bookkeeping and massive libraries can do just fine. because outside of the goblins, no one cares about like. the internet. the most enticing things are databases

superstition-wise, there's a lot of thinking in certain communities on ehl that if you spend enough time with goblins and only goblins, you lose your magic. and like there's no proof of it, but people believe it anyway, and oftentimes they extend that belief to anything goblins make, too

and THEN. practically speaking. the vast majority of ehlves (who are the global majority, probably ~70% of the people on ehl have recent ehlven ancestry) are fire, water, earth, or metal Elementalists. and guess what? elementalism means you have fun(!) ambient effects on your environment. like, say, a fire mage immediately overheating any computer they come in contact with. or an earth mage getting upset and causing microshakes that mess up the delicate stability instruments inside robots. or a metal mage's inherent magnetism completely ripping a phone apart from the inside out. or water mages doing some magic nearby and not realizing they made a full cup of water condense out of the air right onto their keyboard. and thats not even getting into light (aka electricity) mages and every way they can make things go wrong, even as a relative minority compared to the above

and until the superstitious (xenophobic) and political aspects get resolved, it's not likely that the practical ones will be solved. purely because you need lots of people to test these things to see if the solutions work

(there is a solution. it will revolutionize all of the ehlverse once it becomes widespread. it is found out in TMS and present in whispers if you think about a very specific detail when you come across it. but it will rely on governments getting their shit together so anything i write using that specific state of the world will require it being much further down the timeline than ive explored so far so)

[princevictoriapunk]

Kid Pirates hcs #4 - Part 2

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  More Kid Pirates hcs 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.1 - 4.2 | 5 | 6 | 7

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Kid Pirates OC bios — Light | Blaze | Calista | Kira | Eun | Grunge

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Nyx — @silvernyxchariot ; Solace — @ramdeviltart ; Osiris — @/idonthaveacluewhatsgoingonhere

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Dnd edition ✨️ The shop pages of the dice are linked in the character names

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Part 1

Hcs under the cut for length ✨️

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Eun

A Chaotic Evil Water Genasi Cleric is their choice of character. They wanted to somehow have their PC be related to water without it being a Fish-kin like themselves. So, Wire had suggested a Genasi instead. They wanted their set to go with the character, so Fishsticks has picked blue as the main colour with silver numbers. To make the dice a bit extra, they also added glow in the dark dye, making it easier for when the lights get a bit dim when they're playing until late at night.

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Osiris

Osiris would play with this dice set. It simply has everything she needs, blood and skulls. She also likes the colours, and it reminds her of her pet snake. She would definitely play a Dragonborn Barbarian, who is Lawful Evil, because she likes the strength and aggression behind that combination.

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Grunge

His choice is a Yuan-Ti Bard as one of the limited number of support PCs in their campaigns. He heard that there's the possibility of a snake-folk race, as well as a performance oriented class, and he was sold. His dice are of a rather monochrome theme just like the rest of his belongings, their colours being inspired by dark snakes' scales reflecting the light. His character is most likely Chaotic Neutral, too.

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Mohawk

A Chaotic Evil Kobold Bard is Mo's choice of PC. He didn't know what else to go for, so he just picked out whatever sounded fun. However, he left picking out his dice entirely up to fate - aka Kid, Mosh Eun, who were tasked with crafting all of the dice. So, Mohawk ended up with a golden and blue metal set. But also, the sound they make when he's rolling, or is just playing around with them scratches the itch in his brain; and he likes that a lot.

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Oscar

Oscar decided to make a Lawful Neutral Hill Dwarf Druid, giving him his own smarts and other strong suits. Out of everyone's characters, his is the either A) the Most Reliable One, or B) the Actually Most Chaotic One. But it has the tendency to A because of him usually having to be one of the emotionally smartest and calmest people in the crew. And to match his character's Dwarven heritage, he picked a dice set decorated with Dwarven / Norse runes.

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Noe

Chaotic Neutral Forest Gnome Warlock is exactly what it sounds like: "I am magic mushrooms", and "Fuck around and find out". He asked for a forest inspired set. Eun rejected the "mushrooms inside" request because they thought he'd try to eat the dice if they put mushrooms inside. So instead, his set was made with actual bits of moss, sticks, grass and dried petals molded into the resin.

[a/n: the actual ones above only have copper foil and wire inside. Please imagine them to be described as above! :'3]

🌹ꦽꦼ̷  Mosh

They play a Chaotic Neutral Bugbear Fighter. Mosh just thought they're neat and suit him. Unlike the others, they asked for a crystal clear, undyed resin mold with round edges and some copper elements that align with his PC's class as a Fighter. It had taken them a lot of thinking about what his dice should look like, initially wanting a rather flashy set, but ending up taking Eun's suggestion of the one that can be seen above.

[heniareth]

The Battle of Ostagar

Chapter 5: Flemeth’s Hut

In which Astala discovers she's not dead, but many others are, and now they have to deal with this.

Wordcount: 3653

WARNINGS:

- discussion of death - mention of cannibalism - abuse from parent to child in action

(Read the whole chapter on AO3 or down below)

Somebody screamed.

Astala bolted upright, reaching for her weapons. Only then did she realize that it was she who was screaming.

Where was she?

The interior of the hut was unfamiliar. Astala sat up to try and get a better look at her surroundings but didn't get far before she registered pain. It was dull, a throbbing to the rhythm of her heartbeat accompanied by tightness in her shoulder and belly when she moved. It sat deep. What had-

The tower.

Right.

Tentatively, Astala finished sitting up. She could do that. That was good. Going by everything she remembered—arrows, darkspawn and the Archdemon—she should be dead. She should be very dead. How was she not dead? How had she arrived... here?

She had just enough time to take a proper look around—she saw a pot over the fire, smelled stew coming from it, felt fur below her hands and spotted drying herbs hanging from the wooden beams above her—before the door opened and a young woman entered. Dark hair pulled into a bun, patchwork leather skirt and deep purple tunic... Astala blinked.

"Morrigan?"

Morrigan turned to her with a small but genuine smile. “Ah! You are awake! Mother shall be pleased.”

She crouched down in front of the pot, lifted the lid and stirred the contents. The smell of meat intensified. Astala’s stomach growled loudly.

“What happened?” Astala asked.

“You were injured, and Mother rescued you,” Morrigan answered, throwing her a glance crowned by a small frown. “Do you not remember?”

“I…” Astala strained her memory, trying to recall what exactly had happened at the tower. “There were lots of darkspawn. And a dragon! How did your mother do that?”

“I suggest you ask her,” Morrigan answered. “She may even give you an answer.”

Astala tried swinging her legs over the side of the bed. It worked just fine, apart from the pull and the fact that the throbbing sensation in her abdomen intensified. But she’d be able to make her way back to Ostagar.

A trickle of cold dread ran through her veins. Was there an Ostagar to make her way back to?

“What happened to the king’s army?” she asked.

“Your teyrn Loghain quit the field,” Morrigan said, trying a bit of the stew and adding some herbs. “The darkspawn won your battle.”

“So…” Astala said and got all words stuck in her throat. Defeat. At the hand of darkspawn. “The king’s army?”

“Massacred. There are no more Grey Wardens, other than you, the dwarven girl, and the human boy.” She paused and glanced back at the door. “He… is not taking it well.”

Astala stayed seated. She stared into the slow, licking flames below the pot and tried to wrap her head around what Morrigan had just said.

“All of them?” she finally asked. “Duncan? Our commander?”

“Dead,” Morrigan simply said, not without sympathy.

“Everybody?” Astala asked again. Jerome, Onastas, Martin with his huge pot full of food, Palla with the intimidating grey eyes…

Leonard.

Khêd.

Ilanlas.

 “Did… you say your mother only saved us three? Could the others have survived?”

Morrigan closed the lid of the pot with a firm clack of metal against metal. Then she stood up, and only then she turned to Astala.

“I am afraid I do not know,” she said. “You do not want to know what is happening in that valley.”

“Why?” Astala asked. “What's happening?”

“Are you sure you want me to describe it?” Morrigan asked.

Astala pushed herself off the bed. She could stand, fine even. She crossed her arms; she was feeling cold. Blood loss, probably.

“Please, tell me.”

Morrigan exhaled sharply, but she leaned against the hearth and spoke: “I had a good view of the battlefield. ‘Tis a grisly scene. There are bodies everywhere, and darkspawn swarm them… feeding, I think.”

She took a careful look at Astala. Astala swallowed but nodded.

“Continue?”

“The darkspawn are also looking for survivors,” Morrigan said. She wasn't enjoying this conversation. “They drag them down beneath the ground; I cannot say why.”

Sand against her cheek, slipping uselessly through her fingers. Claws wrapped around her ankle, pulling, the screeching darkspawn dragging her into the cave that had swallowed Ilanlas’ friend.

Maker save her, and may his gods watch over Ilanlas. The cold dread in her veins spread.

“Thank you for helping us, Morrigan,” Astala managed to say, dragging herself back to the present.

“I…” Morrigan hesitated. “You are welcome. Though Mother did most of the work. I am no healer.”

“Still.” Astala gave her a weak smile. “Can you tell me where Alistair and Sulri are?”

“Outside,” Morrigan said. “Mother wished to talk to you as well once you woke up.”

“Thank you,” Astala said again and started walking. She could walk. Good.

Once she was outside of the hut, she took a deep breath and just stood there for a moment, soaking in the light of the afternoon sun.

She was alive.

She was alive.

-

She found Alistair at the edge of the lagoon that surrounded the hut, staring out over the murky water. He didn't say anything when she approached and stood next to him. Neither did she. What could words do in a moment like this?

For a while, they stared over the water together.

Finally, Alistair heaved a heavy sigh, shoulders rising and falling like a mountain shrugging.

"Sorry," he sniffled and wiped his nose. Then: "You're alive, Maker's Breath!"

Before Astala could stop him, he enveloped her in a tight hug, the kind that slowly squeezed the air out of you. Astala tensed her back against the pressure and awkwardly patted Alistair on the back.

"You also look… alive," she said when he finally let her go.

Alistair smiled, let out a little huffed laugh. The smile dissolved almost immediately.

"Duncan and… Everybody. They-"

"I know," Astala said, and patted this huge shem on the arm once more. "I know."

Alistait accepted the comfort, poor as it was. He stood there for a while longer with his head bowed. He really wasn't taking it well.

"Well," he finally said. "We are here. And Sulri is here. That has to count for something."

Astala thought of Ilanlas, and Khêd, and nodded for appearance's sake. The inky clouds that had preceded the darkspawn still swirled above them. The sun didn't quite manage to break through.

They went to Sulri, who was sitting at the back of the hut, where the roof jutted out from the wall, throwing pebbles into the lagoon. The rhythmic plitch of the stones hitting the water disturbed the dead silence around them. Astala found herself scanning the horizon for darkspawn, and was relieved when she saw none.

She crouched down next to Sulri and waved hello. Alistair sat down on Sulri's other side. Sulri didn't acknowledge either of them. Instead, she took a larger stone and lobbed it into the lake.

Sploosh.

Cradled by the circular waves from the stone's impact, the cadaver of a fish rose to the surface.

Sulri wrinkled her nose, sat the next stone in her hand down and scooted away from the water.

Astala sat down next to her.

"I'm sorry about Khêd," she said.

Sulri was still staring at the dead fish, expression between mildly disgusted and outraged, as if the poor thing was to blame for all of this. Astala tapped her knee to get her attention.

"I'm sorry about Khêd," she repeated. "Did you know him for long?"

Sulri shook her head and then waved her off. She didn't want to talk? That was okay. Astala had seen worse responses to grief.

Alistair heaved another big sigh. "What do we do now?"

Astala bit the inside of her cheek, waiting to see if any of them would come up with a brilliant solution.

"Well…" she said tentatively when nothing happened. "I would… It might be a good idea to take things slow. We almost died, after all."

"There's no time for taking it slow!" Alistair threw his hands into the air. "We've failed! The darkspawn will overrun Ferelden and all Grey Wardens are dead!"

"Are they?"

Astala scrambled to her feet. Flemeth had stepped around the house, followed by Morrigan. The elderly woman crossed her arms.

"And here I was under the impression I had saved three of the order."

"But we- I'm sorry, ah… madam," Alistair stammered. "What do we call you? You never gave us your name."

"Names are pretty, but useless," Morrigan's mother said. "The Chasind call me Flemeth. I suppose it will do."

"The Flemeth? From the legends?" Although still soft, Alistair's voice was briefly filled with awe instead of sadness before he caught himself. "Daveth was right. You're the Witch of the Wilds, aren't you?"

"And what does that mean?" Flemeth answered flatly. "I know a bit of magic, and it has served you both well, has it not?"

Astala doubted there had been only a bit of magic involved in getting them out of that tower and dragging them—her?—back from the funeral pyre.

"If I may," she ventured. "I- Thank you for saving us, really. I'm very grateful to still be alive. But… why did you save us?"

"Well," Flemeth said as if it was obvious. "We cannot have all the Grey Wardens die at once, can we? Someone has to deal with these darkspawn."

"Yes, but…" Astala hesitated.

It didn't do to anger a powerful witch. Certainly not by questioning her motive and reason behind saving them instead of… well, anybody else.

"We aren't the most experienced," she finally said.

"Does that matter?" Flemeth answered, absolutely unperturbed. "It has always been the Grey Wardens' duty to unite the land in the face of a Blight. Or has that changed while I wasn't looking?"

Astala didn't like her tone. Save her or no, she hadn't almost died only for this woman to be needling her. As if Flemeth was her supervisor on a job!

"I don't know if the Grey Wardens are the best candidates to unite the land," she said, carefully but firmly. "They didn't manage to do so at Ostagar, at least."

"No thanks to teyrn Loghain," Flemeth said, nodded and waited expectantly.

"It doesn't make any sense!" Alistair said bitterly. "Why would he do it?"

"Now that is a good question," Flemeth mused and nodded. "Men's hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature."

Alistair visibly sat up straighter at the witch's approval.

"Perhaps," Flemeth continued, genuinely serious from what Astala could gather, "Loghain thinks the Blight is an army he can outmaneuver. Perhaps he does not see the real threat that lies behind it."

"Is it too much to expect that a tainted Old God will be taken seriously?" Alistair muttered.

Astala cast a glance around. She still didn't see any darkspawn, but that didn't set her at ease. The monsters weren't gone. Or, rather, they were, but in the wrong direction.

She had tk warn her family.

"Maybe we could try to contact the other Grey Wardens," she ventured. "There are more elsewhere, right?"

Alistair shook his head. "The nearest Grey Wardens are in Orlais, and it would take far too long to gather them and an army. Not to mention that nobody wants Orlesians here. We would be kicked out before we could say hello, and not just by Loghain."

Sulri tapped Astala's leg and started signing. She slowed down when Astala asked her to, made her gestures as broad as possible. Still, Astala understood absolutely nothing.

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "I don't think this is going to work right now."

Sulri lowered her hands with an expression that could have frozen flames.

Astala shrugged apologetically and turned back to Flemeth. "So what do we do then?"

"Why do you ask me?" Flemeth answered and blinked owlishly. "I am just an old woman who lives in the Wilds. I know nothing of Blights and darkspawn."

Morrigan, who had been silently standing behind her mother, turned abruptly and left. Flemeth paid her no mind, not even when the door to the hut shut rather loudly.

"At the very least, we have to warn everybody," Alistair said, answering Astala's question. "Teyrn Loghain may think the darkspawn are just a minor threat, but we can't leave everybody else exposed to danger!"

Flemeth turned her attention to him, head cocked to one side. "And who will believe you? Unless you think to convince this Loghain directly of his mistake?"

"He just betrayed his own king!" Alistair jumped to his feet. "If arl Eamon knew what Loghain did at Ostagar, he would be the first to call for an execution!"

Astala frowned. "You know an arl? Personally?"

"I…" Alistair hesitated.

"I suppose," Flemeth quickly intervened, "that this arl Eamon was not at Ostagar."

"That's right!" Alistair looked from Flemeth to Astala, and brightened up for the first time in the whole conversation. "He still has all his troops. And he was Cailan's uncle! He's a good man, respected in the Landsmeet, of course!"

In the shadow cast by her hut, Flemeth's eyes gleamed.

"We could go to Redcliffe and appeal to him for help!" Alistair finished the thought.

"Now, wait a moment-" Astala started, but Flemeth was quicker.

"What happened to the treaties I kept safe? Have you managed to lose them as well?"

"They- I have them!" Alistair pulled them out from under the breastplate of his armor. "How could I forget about them?"

He pressed the treaties into her hands and looked down at her expectantly.

Astala leafed through the old, yellowed pages and looked back up at Alistair. "I don't-"

"Grey Wardens can demand the help from dwarves, elves, mages! They're obligated to help us during a Blight!" Alistair said.

Sulri snatched the treaties out of Astala's hands. Astala let her.

"Alistair…" she said. "There are three of us."

"Exactly!" Alistair said and nodded emphatically. "We need an army, and there we have it!"

Astala must've made the wrong kind of expression, because he went on.

"This is our only chance! There's nothing holding the darkspawn back from marching into Ferelden and burning it to the ground. We have to do this!" He took a deep breath and gestured at the three of them. "We are the only ones who can."

Astala stared at him and then at Flemeth. Flemeth looked back. She didn't blink. Her mouth didn't curve, but in her eyes there was a mad sort of smile.

Astala looked back at Alistair and saw only determination scrawled over a canvas of grief.

Oh Maker.

Oh, fuck.

-

Flemeth was of the opinion that they better leave if they wanted to keep avoiding the darkspawn. So they went and got their things. What things they still had left. Astala pulled on the gambeson—she'd have to clean the blood out of it, and mend it—and decided to leave the chain mail behind. It was broken, she had no way to fix it, and it would only weigh her down. She kept the breastplate. It had the Grey Warden's griffon on it, and that might be useful.

Everything else was still in that ruin now occupied by darkspawn: her pack, hurriedly assembled and then lovingly stocked up by her father; her blanket, bought with the money Ilanlas had gotten for her; the scrap metal she'd feverishly collected from darkspawn corpses in hopes of selling it and maybe getting something good out of her conscription. She still had her weapons, her coin pouch, and a contract with an order that didn't exist in Ferelden anymore. Save for the three of them, of course. What a grand fucking team. She supposed she should be grateful for the fact that she still had boots and that it was summer, not winter.

Speaking of boots, she had absolutely ruined them. Her mother might even have been proud, covered stains from darkspawn blood as the boots now were. The worst kind of irony.

Morrigan reappeared briefly to provide them with pack rolls and provisions, and then disappeared into the inside of the hut again. Astala tied her pack with her meager belongings to her belt. Alistair carried the bulk of everything. Sulri needed help with her pack and took a long time to ask for it. But, at some point, they were ready to go.

Astala turned to Flemeth. "Thank you again for helping us."

"Thank me once all of this is over," Flemeth answered curtly. "And, before you leave, I do have one more thing to offer you."

The door to the hut opened and shut. Flemeth stopped speaking and her eyes left Astala to fix on Morrigan, who was approaching them, ignoring their group in favor of her mother.

"The stew is bubbling, mother dear. Shall we have three guests for the eve or…" She glanced at their packs. "... none?"

"The Grey Wardens are leaving, girl," Flemeth said gravely.

"Oh," Morrigan said in a mocking tone, "such a-"

"And you will be joining them."

"What!?"

"You heard me, girl. The last time I looked, you had ears," Flemeth said and laughed at her own joke.

Astala couldn't say she found it funny. Not when Morrigan was growing visibly pale.

"Thank you," she said tentatively when neither Alistair nor Sulri said anything. "Really. But if Morrigan doesn't want to join us…"

"Nonsense." Flemeth cut her off. "Her magic will be useful. Even better, she knows the Wilds and how to get past the horde."

"Have I no say in this?" Morrigan protested, her voice raised in alarm.

"You have been itching to get out of the Wilds for years. Here is your chance," Flemeth simply said. "As for you, Wardens, consider this repayment for your lives."

"Excuse me?" Astala burst out. She must've misheard.

"Not to… look a gift horse in the mouth but…" Alistair said, absolving Flemeth of the need to answer Astala. "Won't this add to our problems? Out of the Wilds, she's an apostate."

"If you do not wish help from us illegal mages, young man, perhaps I should have left you on that tower," Flemeth replied.

"Point taken," Alistair said, none too happy.

"Mother…" Morrigan turned to the old woman. "This is not how I wanted this! I- I am not even ready-"

"You must be ready," Flemeth said forcefully. "Alone, these three must unite Ferelden against the darkspawn. They need you, Morrigan. Without you, they will surely fail, and all will perish under the Blight." She paused to give her words the appropriate weight. "Even I."

"I… understand…" Morrigan said with a strained sigh.

"And you, Wardens?" Flemeth turned her full attention to them. "I give you that which I value above all in this world. I do this because you must succeed."

Morrigan was staring back at the hut, where the stew was probably still bubbling, and she wouldn't eat it.

"Hey, you'll be okay with us," Astala said quietly to Morrigan.

Morrigan threw her a cold look, as if it was Astala who was dragging her into an adventure she didn't want to go on. Then she turned around.

"Allow me to get my things, if you please."

When she left, Flemeth didn't look after her; she was back to staring at Astala with those unsettling golden eyes. She didn't say anything, either. The one who broke the increasingly uncomfortable silence was Alistair, who leaned closer.

"What a shock, right? 'Three guests or none', and then, poof! She leaves with us."

Astala eyed Flemeth, and was struck by the absolute certainty that Flemeth was hearing every word Alistair said.

"She's a bit… dramatic, don't you think?" Alistair went on. "'Shall we have three guests or… none'. Why that long pause?"

Astala took a deep, steadying breath. "She was looking at our packs and putting two and two together."

Alistair hesitated, then nodded as if considering this, and backed away again.

Flemeth kept looking at Astala. Astala refused to look away.

Finally, Morrigan returned, a pack slung over her shoulder with a bedroll, blanket and fur jacket tied up on top of it. Her mouth, drawn into a thin line, relaxed in a very deliberate way as she approached.

"Farewell, Mother," she said with a casual sigh. "Do not forget the stew on the fire. I would hate to return to a burned-down hut."

"Bah!" Flemeth barked. "'Tis far more likely you will return to see this entire area, along with my hut, swallowed by the Blight."

Morrigan physically recoiled, and her expression crumbled.

"I-" she stammered. "All I meant was-"

"Yes, I know," Flemeth answered gently. "Do try to have fun, dear."

Morrigan turned away abruptly and joined their group, which had waited a few steps away. When she reached them, her expression was impenetrably neutral.

"I am at your disposal, Grey Wardens. I suggest a village north of the Wilds as our first destination. 'Tis not far, and you will find much you need there." She crossed her arms. "Or, if you prefer, I shall simply be your silent guide."

Astala tore her gaze from Flemeth, who was still staring at her, and waited for Alistair to take the lead and answer.

That didn't happen, and the silence started to become uncomfortable.

Finally, Astala cleared her throat. "I like your idea."

Morrigan looked at the other two. Sulri gave a shrug so exaggerated it swam in sarcasm, and Alistair said nothing.

"Very well then," Morrigan said, a few degrees colder. "Follow me, if you please."

She led them to a new path, neither the one by which they had come to nor the one by which they had left the hut before their- her Joining. Astala fell in behind Morrigan, Alistair and Sulri joined… and, just like that, they were off.

To gather an army.

One uncomfortable conversation about Morrigan's cooking skills later, Astala already had enough. This was the stupidest thing she had ever signed up for in a long time.

[quenthel]

ok director's commentary for these designs:

morrigan: I wanted her to keep the same edgy look with a leather skirt but her outfit made no sense so i made it more idk... logical. also i kept the asymmetry of her dress and most of her style elements

wynne: its mostly based on the (modded) mage robes but i added some structure to it and made the sleeves more sweeping... i wanted the outfit to be clearly unfit for travel as i imagine mage robes are like since they never fucking leave the tower BUT wynne herself does travel so i gave her some pouches

sten: I wanted to give him similar clothing to how the qunari got dressed in later games but i added back the signature ugly shirt he wears when you pick him up... i wanted to give the vibe that his full armor was originally without a shirt but he was cold and had to put one on and this random ugly shirt was the only one in his size he could find.... and it does not match the style and colors of his pants and shoulderpads etc

alistair: i just mixed the grey warden armor with the armor he starts off with... i liked that in origins wardens dont really have the signature look juust yet and he has to hide it for most of the game anyway... so he is wearing a warden style tabard but its subtle enough not to make the connection right away

leliana: i wanted to combine the chantry robes with the outfit she wears in that one trailer... so shes wearing a little chantry cape but also a cool archer outfit.

zevran: i mixed together his concept art look (the one from origins) that has these crazy chaps with the leather armor in-game to keep it in the same visual style and added a crow-like cape to it all in an attempt to try to marry the million design elements that got added to the crows/dragon age armor over the years

oghren & loghain: i mostly used their concept art looks and while incorporating some elements from in-game armors. oghren got a more dwarf-style armor this way but it looks a bit shoddy on purpose while loghain is wearing a large flag-type clothing as a tabard to connect to his military past and his commitments...

my wardens: my surana is dressed similar to wynne (since this design is also mostly based on circle robes) but i liked the free shoulders look of the circle mage origin card elf woman so i added that to the design. also i wanted the stripes to be some connection to the new warden role, as well as the blood pendants representing these two sides of her character. my brosca is more guarded and is used to being judged bc of the brand on her face so i put a good ol dwarven helmet on her that she wears bc she is not used to how things are on the surface. the rest of her clothing is practical and without flair bc its what she is used to but i did add some striped fancy pants for that warden connection...

i have been replaying origins and honestly the armors in the game kind of suck so i tried to design/redesign some iconic fits for the companions based on concept art/the more charming elements of the armors in origins....

bonus: my wardens surana and brosca

[criffyzou]

Now that I am in my D&D era, here are the D&D classes and subclasses I think my Dragon Age Next Gen kids would have.

Lena (spirit healer mage): human Peace Domain Cleric Lena is a healer more than a standard D&D wizard, and the peace domain fits her dislike of conflicts. She's also Aveline's daughter so she can have a shield, as a treat.

Mael (ranger rogue): half elf Scout Rogue Finally Alistair's kids can have visible elven ancestry ! Despite the name, Mael is not a tamer of beast, rather a survivalist, having inherited his grandfather's love of maps.

Ailis (guardian warrior): half elf Oath of Redemption Paladin Ailis is a tank; redemption's one of the tankiest paladins, and fits her sunny personality more than crown. She's also probably the most andrastian of the next gen lineup.

Kieran (shapeshifter mage): half elf Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer I could have gone druid like his mother, but that Theirin blood made this subclass the obvious fit. He still gets some dragon shapeshifting at least !

Tini (shadow rogue): hill dwarf Fey Wanderer Ranger I feel like out of all my Dragon Age rogues, Tini was the one to be an actual D&D rogue, but nothing fit the misdirection and confounding of shadow like fey wanderer.

Garen (tempest rogue): hill dwarf Alchemist Artificer Ren's shenanigans are closer to the Inquisition multiplayer Alchemist, but it's not an official spec. D&D alchemist fits okay with the potions and nuisance potential.

Endrin (berserker warrior): hill dwarf Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian I hesitated to go barbarian, as it feels more suited for reaver than berserker; the parallels to the dwarven belief of Stone and ancestors changed my mind.

Connor (rift mage): human Fiend Warlock In DAO canon, Connor becomes a rift mage, studying the Fade in Tevinter, but this seems less true for Inquisition Connor. Let's bring back the desire demon for some angst instead.

Pernille (champion warrior): human College of Swords Bard The warrior spec I wanted for her, Chevalier, only exists in lore; next best option was champion. A college of swords bard fits the chevalier bill while also feeling suitably orlesian.

And adding new kids to the lineup:

Iloren (spirit warrior): wood elf Psi Warrior Fighter Will elaborate later.

Rowan (arcane warrior mage): human War Magic Wizard I was missing a mage, so Teagan Guerrin can sire this Guerrin daughter that is not canon in my world.

Jory (??? rogue): human ??? This one is only the concept of a concept.

[aladaylessecondblog]

New chapter of Faal Hah Wuld

Summary: The dragonborn and Torovan stop for a longer rest and she gets an eyeful of something as she takes first watch. When time for her own rest comes, she sees something much less pleasant.

---------------------------

15th of First Seed, @@@@@@@ 4E202, Night(?)

By the NINE I've got to get a grip or this is going to be the longest trip of my gods-damned life. Who'd have thought a mage would be built like this?

nihtni@@ N I G H T@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

I saw the shadow man again

----------------------------------

Spewing steam, Falmer, dwarven spheres and spiders, and more stone-carved dwarven faces than she cared to think about. That was the journey through the Alftand Glacier Ruins, to Sadrith.

An endless stream of oil, blood, and stones, but simple enough due to how straightforward the path ahead was. Torovan was quiet for most of that journey, aside from the occasional grunt when blasting varying elements at whatever enemy happened to be attacking them.

He's definitely a capable mage, she thought, Again...why am I here? What is the Archmage so worried about?

Even from what she'd seen at the College, Torovan's magic was both fascinating and horrifying. Those he struck, if they didn't drop instantly, seemed stooped or clumsy or somehow deficient in fighting back. Clearly it drained them somehow, but...

The door to Sinderion's field laboratory closed behind them, and Torovan headed for the bed.

...but she hadn't seen spells that affected strength or movement (that weren't ice or necromancy related) in a long while. But then, she hadn't used much magic in general in a long while either. Healing and the occasional destruction spells, that was the bulk of what she learned. Colette had been very helpful in that regard...

"You can take first watch."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Hmm?"

"For--your face," Sadrith said suddenly, "Is there any pain that a healing spell could help with?"

"Not especially," Torovan replied, "There is always pain, to one degree or another. I've grown used to it."

He shrugged at that.

"But if I could help--"

"You can't," he replied in a clipped tone. "Colette, that Breton woman from the College of Winterhold, she's tried, and nothing has been really done."

"Isn't that one reason you want to see the face sculptor?"

"I'd like to remind you that, once again, you were told not to ask questions." Torovan huffed slightly, but seeming momentarily amenable for whatever reason, added, "The face sculptor is merely to make me presentable in company."

"I can understand a little vanity," Sadrith replied, "But this is Skyrim. If they're battle scars, they'd be more a mark of honor than anything..."

Shut up, Sadrith, shutupshutUP. No more questions. Stop it, she thought, You're prying too much.

Torovan didn't answer for a moment, but then said, "As I said...you can take the first watch. The cold journey down here has been draining, and I'd prefer to get the first sleep, considering how much warmer it can be in this little room."

"That's fine," Sadrith replied, "I don't think I could sleep after the fight it was to get down here anyway."

She looked away, tucking her bags and some of Torovan's under the table where the Crimson Nirnroot had once been, and behind her Torovan was light a fire in the small fireplace.

"Have you got anything to feed it with?" she asked, glancing back at the flickering flames.

"Sigurd--the Archmage--loaded me down with a few bundles of firewood, knowing we'd be coming down here. I'll be glad to be rid of them." He gestured to a few bulky looking bags she hadn't especially took notice of.

"Good, good," she said with a slight smile, "Though, I do have a few copies of the Lusty Argonian Maid if we run out."

She could almost feel the look Torovan was giving her, though she wasn't facing him directly.

"They're the cheapest books imaginable, and...I don't like burning books, but they carry better than firewood." She shrugged. The pages were also good for...other purposes.

His head tilted back slightly, but then came back down.

"At any rate..."

He turned away, shed the fur robe that he'd been wearing, and lay it down on the bed. Then the robe beneath it.

Sadrith sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of Torovan's bare shoulders. It wasn't that he was taking off layers...more so what was UNDER the layers. How, she wondered, could he possibly hide such muscular shoulders under those robes?

The feeling didn't change as he turned, shaking out the robe slightly. She didn't catch much at first, but as his hands (and the robe) moved down, she got a better view of his chest, and...

Oh, by the gods, I could grind axes on those abs...what's he doing being a mage when he has a body like this?

She knew she was staring, but she couldn't help it considering the most slender yet built figure she'd ever seen was standing before her; Torovan's body was a veritable feast for the eyes. Something to stand in awe of.

"Dragonborn?"

She snapped out of it, and looked up at his eye. "Ah...sorry. Did you need something?"

He made a sound in his throat she'd swear afterward was a chuckle.

He noticed. Gods, he saw me staring, he's probably laughing at me.

"I'm going to sleep now. Try not to get up to anything noisy...I sleep lightly."

He lay down, and within a few minutes was fast asleep and snoring rather loudly. Sadrith sat by the door, still trying to process what she'd just seen. It seemed burned into her mind--that torso of his, chiseled as if from marble, as if the gods themselves had crafted it. That body was more a work of art than any sculpture of a man she'd ever seen.

On that thought Sadrith (quietly) went through her bags and found a few rolls of paper and some charcoal. Maybe, she thought, if she saw it again, she'd stop thinking about it. Maybe if she got it on paper, she'd stop summoning the image in her mind to 'see' it again and again.

Down, girl. He's a snobby ass anyway. Sometimes they're good-looking. This'll pass. It always does.

After scribbling a quick journal entry, she drew him several times, finding herself utterly absorbed in recapturing what she'd seen. She added a head and his hair to each one, but not able to get the bandages done to her own satisfaction, filled in a void where his face ought to be, with the one eye standing out in it. Once done, she gave the sketches a glance or two before tucking them back into her bags.

Now and then, she got up to refuel the fire, when the light got a bit too low.

He makes for a good subject, at least.

With the skooma-induced lack of appetite finally starting to retreat, she felt actual hunger. A rather good meal was put together of a strip of dried horker meat, a wedge of eidar cheese, a couple carrots, and a few leaves of lettuce from a head she'd bought back in Whiterun.

That was the best indicator of the passage of time she had, in moments when she was lost in whatever thing was being done at the time--when her body started warning her about hunger in all its various ways. The empty stomach she could easily ignore, but the slight nausea, and airy feeling in the head were not so easily shoved off. If she kept ignoring it, the headaches would follow soon after.

She tried to sit quietly and listen for any sounds of dwemer constructs or chaurus outside the door after that, but found she couldn't sit still to do so, and went looking in her bags for a book to read.

Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi To Her Favored Daughter was finished first, and she had nearly gotten through with Varieties Of Faith In The Empire when she heard someone stirring. When she looked up, she saw Torovan, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"Sleep well?" she asked.

"Well enough," Torovan replied quietly, as he stood.

It was a fight not to stare as he redressed, but she managed it, and tucked away her book when he approached.

Sadrith took off only her top layer of armor, and unrolled the blanket tucked into one of her bags before curling up on the stone bed beneath it. Torovan had left his heavy fur cloak down, so it was a fair bit cozier than it would normally be.

She still tossed and turned for a while.

--------------------------------------

Ceiling.

Sadrith had woken up, and would have been mentally cursing if she could spare the energy from trying to breathe and move. Torovan was seated by the door, though she couldn't move her head enough to see exactly what he was doing.

It's alright. It's alright. This just happens now and then. It's a bad dream, that's all.

She felt paralyzed, unable to move a single muscle. Her heart was absolutely racing, and there was a sensation like there was a heavy weight on her chest--and though she struggled, she couldn't move so much as a finger.

It's alright. It'll pass. It always does.

Annoyance and resignation turned into panic, however, when she saw the shadow man. More an outline than a figure, and entirely dark, like an absence in the air.

Not YOU again

He was at the far end of the room, by the table, and she felt nothing but evil from his presence. He approached, floated almost, for he certainly didn't have legs. Or if he did, she couldn't see them. In a few seconds he was at the end of the bed--and then, beside it, leaning over her.

You bind wounds that should be torn open.

Leave me alone, she thought, You're just a nightmare. You're not real. You're NOT REAL.

You were meant to unmake, yet cling to creation

A hand moved up, or maybe a claw. Sadrith couldn't tell--she was too focused on trying to avoid looking at the shadowy man, on trying to move, on anything but the voice whispering beside her.

My patience with you is wearing thin

The hand moved forward, grasped at her throat--she struggled again, more, her breathing rapid, her heart a swift drum beat in her chest.

He's going to go away, he's going to go away, HE'S GOING TO GO AWAY--

Suddenly, a pair of hands on her shoulders, bringing her up, though her head briefly dangled as if lifeless. The paralysis seemed to leave her body. She looked up not at the shadowy man, but into Torovan's bandaged face, and one good eye.

"What happened?" he asked, "You sounded like you were--"

"I--have episodes when I sleep, now and then," she said quickly, too relieved at being out of said episode to be snappish, "I'll wake up unable to move for a few moments. It's...it's nothing."

She half-leaned against him. Physical contact, that was always nice after episodes like this, always seemed to help.

"That didn't look like nothing. If it's a nightmare, you can say so. I'm not going to judge you on that, considering all that you've seen..."

"I'm fine," she said, moving back and pulling out of his grip. "Has it--has it been long?"

"We can spare another hour, if necessary." He seemed to be studying her again, looking...but for what?

"I...that would be nice. Thank you, but...let me get something, first." She went for her bags, and grabbed a bottle of mead. A few sips were had, and with that eye still watching her every movement she scribbled out a haphazard journal entry. Writing. That was good. Skin contact, ale, and doing something fiddly, they usually helped make the ongoing ill feeling pass on...or at least distracted her from it.

She lay back down a few minutes later, and thankfully did not see the shadow man when Torovan woke her.

[exhausted-archivist]

Cookbook Sample Preview...

I'm perfectly normal about this, totally calm. But I noticed on Sunday that the Dragon Age official cookbook had a preview/sample that it didn't have last time I checked. To summarize, it shows the Table of Contents and 7 new preview recipes along with 2 from an earlier sample release. It's basically previews the whole first section "Starters and Refreshments".

I will be putting things under cuts in case people don't wanna see things. From now on and after its release, the tag I will be using for the cookbook if you want to block is #tastes of thedas or #da: tot

I will also be silently combusting inside as I try not to let the excitement amp me up too much. I expect to fail this mission lol. (Spoiler I did fail and have been making my excitement everyone's problem.)

So, the cookbook sample. Amazon had a scrolling preview that wasn't as nice as the spreads so I made them into spreads like we got with the previous six recipes. You can see them here in this post.

But the following is the full spread of the sample from the cookbook. It gives us the cover, the two title pages, the table of contents, an introduction of a new character/narrator, the table of contents for the Starters and Refreshers section, and the 9 recipes within that section.

Beneath the images, I have transcribed the lore blurbs of the recipe as well as give an image description, but I didn't type out the recipes. That's for a later post (Also because it doesn't fit on this post. I hit the limit, sorry.) For a similar reason, I'm not adding my commentary to any of the recipes.

Contents

Introduction - 7

Starters & Refreshments

Eggs à la Val Foret - 11 Nevarran Blood Orange Salad - 13 Fried Young Giant Spider - 15 Stuffed Deep Mushrooms - 17 Rivaini Couscous Salad - 19 Crab Cakes from Kirkwall - 21 Fluffy Mackerel Pudding - 23 Snail & Watercress Salad - 25 Cave Beetles - 27

For the Road

Spiced Jerky - 31 Grey Warden Pastry Pockets - 33 Pickled Eggs - 35 Unidentified Meat - 37 Seheron Fish Pockets - 39 Crow Feed - 43 Black Lichen Bread - 45 Hearth Cakes - 47 Peasant Bread - 49

Soups & Stews

Merril's Blood Soup - 53 Fereldan Potato and Leek Soup - 55 The Hanged Man's Mystery Meat Stew - 57 Fish Chowder - 59 Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup - 61 Lentil Soup - 63 Nettle Soup - 65 King Alistair's Lamb and Pea Soup - 67

Main Courses

Stuffed Cabbage - 71 Antivan Gnochi - 73 Antivan Paella - 75 Grilled Poussin - 77 Gurgut Roast with Lowlander Spices and Mushroom Sauce - 79 Nug Pancakes - 81 Fish in Salt Crust - 83 Roasted Wyvern - 85 Nug Bacon and Egg Pie - 87 Starkhaven Fish and Egg Pie - 89 Cacio e Pepe - 91 Turnip and Mutton Pie - 93 Smoked Ham from the Anderfels - 95 Roasted Turkey with Sides - 97

Sides

Sera's Yummy Corn - 103 Stuffed Vine Leaves - 105 Honey Carrots - 107 Nevarran Flat Bread and Yogurt Dip - 109

Sweet Delights

Blancmange - 113 Poison Stings - 115 Dalish Forest Fruit Cobbler - 117 Dwarven Plum Jam - 119 Sour Cherries in Cream - 121 Treviso Energy Balls - 123 Rice Pudding - 125 Goat Custard - 127

Baked Goods

Antivan Apple Grenade - 131 Found Cake - 133 Varric's Favorite Cinnamon Rolls - 135 Croissants - 137 Cherry Cupcakes - 139 Chocolate Cake - 141 Varric's Favorite Pastries - 143 Sugar Cake - 145 Lamprey Cake - 147 Tevinter Pumpkin Bread - 151

Drinks & Potions

Lichen Ale - 155 The Hissing Drake - 157 Hot Chocolate - 159 Antivan Sip-Sip - 161 Dragon Piss - 163 Rivaini Tea Blend - 165 The Golden Nug - 167 The Emerald Valley - 169 Chasind Sack Mead - 171

Conversion Charts - 173 About the Authors and Photographers - 174

Introduction

Dear Mum,

It's me, Devon! I'm all grown up now-- or, well, more grown up than before. You always said I was too much like a child for my own good, and given the number of times you caught me daydreaming about going off on some grand adventure instead of sweeping the floors, I will grudgingly admit that you probably - probably - had a point. But guess what? I finally went on an adventure! A big one! Just like the Hero of Ferelden!

Okay, well, maybe not exactly like the Hero of Ferelden. But I did travel across Thedas! From Ferelden to Orlais, to Rivain, and even Tevinter. Plus, everything in between. It was a long journey, Mum. Weeks and weeks on the road, with the occasional bandit or beast. You'd probably have hated it, but, by Andraste, I loved every second of it! The sights! The sounds! The food.

Oh yes, the food. The reason why I set out on this journey to begin with. I know that I wasn't particularly adept in the kitchen the last time we saw each other. And, yes, I do remember that I nearly set Castle Cousland aflame with my first attempt at a stew. But I am pleased to inform you that I have been practicing extensively, and I think that, if the position still existed, I could take up your mantle as the Cousland family's cook. Granted, I doubt I would be able to fill your shoes completely; no one could manage such an impossible task. But I like to tell myself that I still would be able to make you proud.

And that takes me back to this journey and the all-important question of why. Why did I spend the last year traveling from one end of Thedas to the other, sampling whatever local cuisine I could get my hands on, even dishes that were downright strange? You're probably thinking that it's because the Hero of Ferelden ate it at some point - yes, that's certainly part of it, though I'll have you know that I tracked down foods enjoyed by the Champion of Kirkwall and the Inquisitor as well! Not to mention all their companions. But the truth is, Mum, throughout all of this, you were right there with them at the forefront of my mind. Because when I thought of ways to honor you, I kept coming back to the most important lesson you taught me: Love through food.

Every time I left your kitchen with a warm, full belly, I felt your love for me. And though I can't do the same for you anymore, I can fill this book. I can stuff it full of different recipes, dishes you've probably never even heard of, and think of you with each new entry. Because, you see, Mum, underneath all that childlike excitement, the dreams of adventure and heroism, I'm still very much your child. And I always will be.

Thank you for everything, Mum. I can't wait to share this book and the lessons that inspired it with the rest of the world.

Love, Devon

Starters & Refreshments

Eggs à la Val Foret

Image Description: A pancake with ham and a sliced poached egg with paprika and herbs on top sit on a silver platter.

Recipe Blurb: Ah, yes. Tons of cream! Exactly what I've come to expect from Orlesian cuisine. Do I have any tips for creating the perfect poached egg? Well, ever since I heard that Solas's bald head was once likened to an egg, I simply try to make my eggs just as round and shiny! So far, it's worked wonderfully and never ceases to put a smile on my face.

Nevarran Blood Orange Salad

Image Description: A wooden bowl rests on a rock, it holds a colourful salad with blood orange slices resting on top.

Recipe Blurb: Although I knew that Divine Victoria left behind a life of wealth and privilege to join the Seekers of Truth, it wasn't until I was in Nevarra, seeing exactly what she'd given up, that I truly gained an appreciation for the path she'd chosen. The best way to describe my first glimpse of the gardens of Nevarra is that it was like seeing a painting come to life. For a long moment, I could only stand there, so dazzled by the richness and vibrancy of it all that I was half-convinced I was actually still napping in the carriage. Surely, there was no way such beauty could be found outside of a dream. And yet the beauty before me was very much real.

So, too, was the picturesque tableau that arrived later that day on a plate: perfectly cut slices of blood orange artfully arranged on a lush pillow of bitter greens. Was this a meal or a still life, I wondered. In truth, the answer was both. For Nevarrans, food is as much a feast for the eyes as for the mouth. But even if your arrangement isn't quite worthy of being displayed in a museum, this salad will sing a symphony on your tastebuds.

Fried Young Giant Spiders

Image Description: A metal bowl filled with salad greens and fried crab legs arranged on top. Plate sits on a wooden table with a metal item and a smoking pot in the background.

Recipe Blurb: Just as people on the surface raise cows and goats, the dwarves underground raise spiders. Yes, to eat. The legs are fried and served with a sauce, which, true to dwarven fashion, is made with some type of alcohol. The precise kind depends on the establishment where you're eating your spider legs. Unfortunately, I couldn't get an exact recipe from any of the chefs I spoke to. These sauces are apparently closely guarded secrets and have spurred many a nefarious plot to acquire them-the competiontion to be crowned Orzammar's Best Sauce is fierce. But I've been assured that lichen ale is generally not used.

I've therefore come up with my own recipe, based on the many varieties I sampled while in Orzammar. Given that sourcing the requisite spider legs above ground is not nearly so easy, and the demand for such exports is minimal, I've subsituted them with crab legs. It's not a perfect match, but it's close enough to satisfy me.

Stuffed Deep Mushrooms

Image Description: Three mushroom caps fulled with a green, cheesy blend topped with chives. Placed on a platter that looks like a cut of wood, red capped mushrooms with white spots in the right hand corner in the foreground.

Recipe Blurb: Though the mushrooms growing underground in caves and in many parts of the Deep Roads are all called "deep mushrooms," there is no singular variety. In fact, there are several! Some mushrooms are squat, with broad, flat caps, while others are long and spindly, reaching toward the sky like an old man's gnarled fingers. They also have a multitude of applications, used in the creation of everything from restorative potions to deadly poisons. But in Orzammar, mushrooms are farmed for eating!

I was able to sample some of these dwarven delicacies, prized for their unique flavor and intoxicating scent. After only a few bites, I was struck with inspiration. How delicious would one of these mushrooms be when stuffed with cheese and spinach? The answer is: very. Rest assured that I selected this particular variety of deep mushroom not only for its shape, which is ideal for holding the maximum amount of cheese (and spinach), but also for the fact that it does not carry the darkspawn taint. While certain dwarves will insist that a deep mushroom's proximity to lyrium and darkspawn can only improve its flavor, I am quite content to leave that particular question a mystery, especially where lyrium is concerned. Although I'm hardly and expert on the stuff, I can't help but think about Fenris and how much suffering he endured as a result of his lyrium-infused markings. It seems to me that, barring any natural resistance, lyrium and the body are two things that probably shouldn't mix.

Rivaini Couscous Salad

Image Description: A copper bowl filled with couscous, mixed with various veggies and a mint leaf on top. A letter with an amulet from Alistair in the bottom left corner - merch from the BioWare store.

Recipe Blurb: When I first encountered couscous, I mistakenly believed it to be a grain, like rice or the more familiar Fereldan barley. I was swiftly corrected. In fact, couscous is a sort of pasta, made with semolina flour and water, although it's far smaller than your typical Antivan pasta. Couscous has a very mild flavor on its own--maybe slightly nutty. But where it excels is in its ability to soak up surrounding flavors, making it a perfect base for any salad. I'd love to experiment further, but so far, this particular combination of red bell pepper and mint has proven to be incredibly pleasing.

Crab Cakes from Kirkwall

Image Description: A caste iron pan over a bed of coals and flames, filled with battered soft shelled crabs, red peppers, and lemon slices.

Recipe Blurb: I love it when recipes add a dash of whimsy into the mix. Food shoulf be fun. I, therefore, took it upon myself to put this into practice with a classic Kirkwall dish. After all, who hasn't looked at their crab cakes and wished they looked a little more like crabs? Okay, maybe I'm the only one who's thought this. But now that I've brought this possibility to your attention, I'm certain you're interested as well! Best of all, these extra-crabby crab cakes stay true to the original recipe's flavors, so nothig is lost--only gained!

Fluffy Mackerel Pudding

Image Description: Two red small bowls with baked masked potatoes and a slice of hard boiled egg on top sit on a net with a starfish in the background.

Recipe Blurb: Can it really be Feast Day without fluffy mackerel pudding? No! In fact, there's no dish I associate more strongly with the holiday than this unique combination of mackerel, onion, celery, and eggs. Granted, I've heard stories that, several decades ago, someone once attempted a diet consisting entirely of fluffy mackerel pudding. Now, that I certainly wouldn't recommend. It stops being Feast Day Fish if you eat it every day, no?

Snail & Watercress Salad

Image Description: A wooden bowl resting on a river rock, filled with a salad comprised of mixed greens, radishes, and cooked snails.

Recipe Blurb: When the Avvar can't get their hands on a gurgut or a wyvern, they turn their attention to smaller prey. Much smaller prey. Snails are found on many a hillside boulder, making them an abundant source of food for the Avvar. Now, while some would wrinkle their noses or cry out in disgust at the prospect of eating a snail, I am pleased to report that, when prepared correctly, the texture. and flavor are actually good! I could happily eat a plate full of snails dressed in butter and oil, but those still on the fence about a snail's place

Cave Beetles

Image Description: A carved bowl holding cooked whole prawns, lemon slices and herbs sit on a rock with fake beetles and a black rock with blue glowing lines in the background.

Recipe Blurb: You think that, after snails, I'd balk at beetles? Never! In fact, I greatly enjoyed this dwarven dish, which involves roasting cave beetles in their shells. However, I recognize that many may not have a palate that's nearly so adventurous. If that's the case, the cave beetles can be replaced with whole prawns while keeping the rest of the recipe the same. That being said, if you do enjoy the variation with prawns, I really recommend giving the cave beetles a try. They're quite similar in both texture and flavor. If you were to blindfold yourself, I doubt you could tell the difference!

[high-dragon-bait]

Sorry for being a nuisance 🥰 I know you're probably getting waaaay to much of these (but you're doing such an awesome job with them 😍) and may be tired of fake banter...

but fake banter for Fenris and the Iron Bull, please? 🙏

And/Or

more banter for Fenris and Dorian, please, please, please? 🥺🥺🥺

Hello! I picked Bull and Fenris for this. It's pretty goofy since my last banter was so heavy. Also it requires a disclaimer:

Look. Sometimes. These don't go in the direction I expect. I lose control and have no choice but to write down whatever it is the blorbos want to say. I'm absolving myself of any and all responsibility here. Enjoy

____

Fenris: Is there something you want, Qunari?

Iron Bull: You've got a reputation with the Vints. The things they say about the Blue Wraith... it's good to meet you.

(Third Party Member Dependant)

Dorian: Wait... Bull, are you a fan?

Blackwall: I think the man's in love!

Cole: He likes watching the blood drip to the grass. He feels warm when it matches the beat.

Solas: Tread carefully Iron Bull, our guest’s abilities can be unpredictable.

Cassandra: You are aware this is a friend of the Champion, yes?

Sera: Uh-oh. Watch out glowy-man!

Vivienne: Oh dear, I do believe the Wraith has added another heart to his collection.

Varric: Hate to tell you Tiny, but you've got loads of competition for that one.

Iron Bull: What? Not every day you meet a guy who can rip the beating heart out of a man’s chest with his bare hands. Getting to see it up close is nice.

Fenris: That's... a unique response.

____

Iron Bull: Hey, Fenris?

Fenris: Yes, Qunari?

Iron Bull: Ben-Hassrath. Get it right.

Fenris: No.

Iron Bull: Uh- okay- You looking for work after this gig? Chargers could use a guy like you.

Fenris: You’d like me to join your mercenaries?

Iron Bull: We’d give you steady work. Good coin. Good drinks. The chance to stick your hands wherever you want.

Fenris: Tempting. I’m afraid I have my own uses for my talents.

Iron Bull: Oh yeah, I bet.

Fenris: What?

Iron Bull: What?

____

Iron Bull: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever ripped out of a guy?

Fenris: What answer are you expecting?

Iron Bull: A second heart? Some crazy blood crystal? Oh! A man eats his twin in the womb, never knows it, and then the last thing he sees is you rip it out of him!

Fenris: I once grabbed a man’s stomach by mistake. It was unpleasant.

Iron Bull: You're not as fun as I thought you’d be.

Fenris: I weep to hear it.

____

Iron Bull: You stand taller every time we pass someone who looks noble.

Fenris: Are you about to accuse me of reflexive respect shown to those in power?

Iron Bull: Oh, I think it's reflexive. I don't think it's respect.

Fenris: What is it then?

Iron Bull: Respect would be standing so they feel important, careful you don't stare too long at the face. You look straight at them. Move your shoulders in a way that makes you look big. You let them know one step too close, and they won't get to make a step back.

Fenris: I see. Teth a, Qunari.

Iron Bull: That's all I do, Wraith.

____

Iron Bull: Hate to say it boss, but all these demons might make you the worst contract we've ever had.

Fenris: I once faced a demon of pure magic and stone, lost in the pits of a forgotten dwarven thaig.

Iron Bull: Wait… really?

Fenris: We had been in the Deep Roads for a week. After being deliberately trapped and left to rot.

Iron Bull: I can’t tell if you’re joking.

Fenris: By the man who hired us.

Iron Bull: Ah, now I believe you. Shitty clients? Nothing’s impossible. 

____

Iron Bull: (Groans)

Fenris: Sore?

Iron Bull: Anyone ever tell you you're heavier than you look?

Fenris: Yes. Stronger too.

Iron Bull: That part's not a problem

Inquisitor: Everything alright, Bull?

Iron Bull: Fine boss. We were just blowing off a little steam. Doing some sparring.

Inquisitor: What kind of sparring put you in this condition?

Iron Bull: My kind.

Fenris: Am I still less fun than you thought?

Iron Bull: Can't tell by just one session, Wraith.

Fenris: Then I'll have to see you tonight, Qunari.

Inquisitor: I... Please don't break anything.

Iron Bull: No promises, boss.

[middleearthpixie]

This was the artwork I commissioned, Baby It's Cold Outside done by the amazing ConsultingPacha for the #FotFicPinupCalendar2023 organized by @frosticenow.

and this is the fic (A Bit of Home) I wrote to accompany it...

A Bit of Home

Summary: The Hobbit, Post-Sack/Pre-Quest for Erebor 

You’re spending your first Yule with Thorin, but being that you are from this world and not Middle Earth, you miss Christmas as well. At least, you do until Thorin brings a bit of it to you

Pairing: Thorin x Fem!Reader

Characters: Thorin Oakenshield, reader, 

Warnings: Nothing but fluffy fluff to be found here

Rating: G

Words: 2,742

***

Snow shifted softly through the trees, settling along the branches to dust them white. Here and  there, a cardinal showed through, their scarlet feathers looking like drops of blood against the stark background. The fire crackled softly on the hearth in the great room, and in the kitchen, where you stood, another crackled as well, a bit louder and the flames danced a bit higher, but it kept the kitchen warm enough.

It was your first Yule in Middle Earth and while you’d grown used to your new home, you couldn't help but miss your old one from time to time. The bouts of homesickness had lessened, of course, but you were fairly certain they’d never go away entirely, no matter how happy you might be now.

And you really were happy. It had taken some doing to convince Thorin you weren’t mad—after all, one could hardly fault him for thinking otherwise when he happened upon you, wandering about the woods not far from the village of Hamelin, wearing strange clothes he’d never seen before, and talking about things such as cell phones and the internet. You tried to explain the concept of a wormhole and falling through one to land in his place and time, but since you didn't really understand it yourself, you might as well have been talking Greek to him, as your mother would say. Still, the important part was how you managed to convince him you were perfectly sane and that you weren’t about to attack him or worse. He offered you a place to sleep for the night and you never left. Over time, he helped you settle in and things being what they were, you were now a couple. 

But as the holiday drew nearer, the homesickness worsened. No one back in your time, in your world, knew what happened to you. You were probably just considered missing and you tried not think about how worried your family must have been. Especially at that time of year. You wished you had some way to let them know you were alive and well and very happy, but since there were no internet connections or cell towers to be found, you could only hope they felt it somehow.

You tried not dwell, and Thorin was endlessly patient as he listened to you describe what Christmas was like, and at its heart, it really wasn't all that much different from Yule. Thorin smiled as you tried to describe Santa Claus, merriment dancing in his pale blue eyes as he said, “He sounds like Bombur, only taller.”

“And with white hair, instead of red,” you’d said in return. “And not nearly as quiet.”

He’d asked you questions about your traditions, explained to you about the dwarven ones, adding, “And if the time comes where Erebor is ours once more, the celebration will be even grander.”

Erebor. His ancestral home deep within the Lonely Mountain, whose throne he stood to inherit was now in the possession of a firedrake from the north known as Smaug the Terrible. Thorin spoke every now and again of returning to the mountain, of taking back what was rightly his, but at the same time, he seemed very content with the home you’d created for the two of you. He worked as a blacksmith to put food on the table and keep the roof over your head and while it wasn't the same as being a king, he did very well just the same. He was an artisan, and people came from all around to commission pieces from him in addition to purchasing the more mundane, everyday tools he forged as well. 

As the holiday grew closer, Thorin found himself working longer hours. More often than not, you ate supper alone and were fast asleep by the time he came home. He was up with the sun and gone before you awoke and while you understood, you missed him just the same and looked forward to the time when he’d keep more normal hours.

The kettle whistled to let you know the water boiled and you’d just plucked it carefully from the hook over the fire when there came a knock at the door. You set the kettle down and moved to the kitchen door to open it.

“Good morning, madam, I’ve a missive from the village for you.” 

He held out the folded sheet of ivory parchment sealed with a scarlet D, which made you smile. Why the deuce was Thorin sending you a missive when he could just come home and tell you? True, the cozy stone cottage was at the opposite end of the village, but it wasn’t that big of a village to begin with and the trip would take no more than twenty or thirty minutes, tops.

Even so, you thanked the courier and as he strolled off into the snow, you cracked the seal and unfolded the parchment. 

“Mesmel,

“Please come down to the village tonight at half-six. I’ve a surprise for you.

Yours, 

T”

Mesmel. Jewel of all jewels, he’d explained the first time he’d whispered it to you. Without fail, you smiled every time he spoke it, and did so now seeing it in writing. 

And a surprise? He wasn't much one for surprises, or of frivolity of any sort, really. He was stoic and serious and rarely smiled, although he seemed to smile much more often of late, even if it wasn't nearly as often as you’d like. 

Your mind boggled all the rest of the afternoon and as the time approached, you grabbed your sensible woolen cloak to draw about your shoulders and hurried out into the swiftly falling snow. The sun had begun its descent into the horizon and the air was crisp and cold, your breath a frosty cloud of silver vapor with each breath, swirling about you as you made your way from the stone cottage at the end of the lane to trek your way into the village proper. 

You smiled and bobbed your head at those you passed along the way. Hamelin was an eclectic village of Hamelin, with its mix of dwarves, Men, and even an occasional elf here and there. They all regarded you with suspicion at one time, but lately the smiles seemed more genuine and you didn't get the feeling they whispered about you behind your back nearly as often as they once had.

Thorin’s blacksmithy was at the far end of Stone Street, a large rustic wood-and-stone building from which plumes of smoke rose and the clang of steel meeting iron rang out the way church bells chimed. As you drew near, you not only heard the clanging, but felt it as the vibrations rippled through you with each strike of the hammer. It rose in volume, in a steady rhythm and you could almost picture Thorin there, at the anvil, hammer in his right hand, lifting it high above his head only to bring it down with incredibly force to slowly, steadily, shape the iron he forged into a gleaming blade that would soon be polished to a mirror finish when he was through.

The door to the front of the shop opened with the cheerful tinkle of the bell above it. The clanging stopped, then a deep voice bellowed, “Who goes?”

“Someone sent me a message requesting I stop by.”

“Mesmel.” You heard the smile in his voice as he said that one word. “Wait a moment whilst I clear up this mess.”

“What are you about, Thorin?” 

“You will see.”

“Thorin?”

“Trust me, mesmel.”

You sighed softly as you reached to unfasten the frogs at your throat and then whisked your cloak from around your shoulders. It was always so warm in the shop and today was no exception. Various dull scraping sounds and an occasional thud came from the back, each followed by, “Everything is fine, stay where you are.”

“Thorin, this is getting silly.”

“Very well,” he let out a heavy breath, “come back.”

You skirted the front desk, and made your way around toward the rear of the shop, where tools and works in progress were kept along with orders awaiting pickup. Along the rear wall was a hearth large enough for you to stand in, and while it normally had a raging fire crackling away, this one was now far smaller, casting enough light to give everything a soft, ivory glow.

But, instead of the tools of his trade being scattered about, the work area was tidied and you smiled at the small table, and two chairs he’d set up, which explained the scraping and thuds. Upon that table stood an elegant, if somewhat tarnished candelabra holding the stumps of candles, whose dancing flames belied the candles’ rather sorry state. 

A bottle of wine and two goblets stood together as well. The goblets didn't match, but you didn't care as you smiled at the sight. Your dwarf was not much one for overly romantic gestures on a regular basis, but when he gave into them, they were memorable, to say the least. 

He came out of the back room and you could only stare, a smile tugging at your lips as you took in the sight of him dressed in only his black, rough-hewn trousers and a red Santa cap set at a slight angle atop his head. In the gleam of the firelight, he looked beyond handsome—almost mystical, really—with the glow highlighting the swells of muscle along his shoulders and wrapped down about his arms. His long, curly black hair spilled over those broad shoulders and his smile reached his eyes, softening them to near sapphire.

“Thorin,” you said, draping your cloak over your forearm, “what are you about?”

“I know you miss your world, and your traditions and I know I’ve been running like a madman these last few weeks, but I didn't want you to think I’d forgotten how important those traditions are to you. Merry Christmas, I believe, is what you tell people in your world?”

You nodded, your throat tightening as tears stung your eyes. “Yes,” you managed to whisper, “we say merry Christmas.”

He stepped closer. He was tall for a dwarf and you were short for being of Man, which meant you were both the same height. The same height, but he was far broader across the chest and shoulders, and his legs were far thicker than yours would ever be. He was handsome and utterly perfect in so many ways and without thinking, you lay your hand against his chest, your fingers slipping through the soft, dark hair that curled away from his skin as it stretched from shoulder to shoulder and down over his firm belly. 

“Merry Christmas, amrâlimê.” He bent to you, his lips soft, his heavy, black beard shot through with hints of silver prickly against your skin. Those lips met yours, moved slowly against them, parted as the tip of his tongue swept between your lips to tease yours. 

You slid the hand on his chest up, around to his nape to pull him closer. Heat from his massive hands sank into you as he wrapped those powerful arms about you and crushed you close. He bent you back, his hands splayed against you—one on your upper back, the other cupped about your lower cheek.

His kiss was slow and teasing and deep and you almost sighed when he broke it and pulled back to press his forehead to yours. “I have a gift for you, mesmel,” he murmured.

“You mean, this isn’t it?”

A low, rumbling purr of a laugh bubbled to his lips. “It is not, no. But, I’m glad you think it could be.”

“You’re hot, Thorin,” you told him as he straightened up and stepped away from you. “You have to know that.”

“Everyone is hot in here,” he replied with a hint of a puzzlement. “Because of the fires.”

You smiled. Almost a year together and you still had to explain certain expressions to him. “Yes, that’s true, but you are hotter than anyone else in this room at any given time.”

A hint of color rose along his cheekbones, above the line of that thick beard. “I thank you for the compliment.”

As he spoke, he moved toward the workbench along the far wall. “I know I’ve been going like a madman lately, and you’ve spent far more time alone than you bargained for.”

“I understand. You’re in demand and rightfully so.” You looked about at the wall to your left, where there hung blades and axes of varying sizes and embellishments, from a simple, plain sword to those with finely etched and ornate handles encrusted with gemstones set in precious metals. “You’ve got a gift, you know. You’re more an artist than a tradesman.”

He looked up, his forehead furrowed beneath the brilliant white fur rim of his Santa cap. “They are not mutually exclusive, you know.”

“No, I didn't mean it that way. I just—you have a gift and it shows through in every piece you forge.”

His forehead smoothed, to your relief, and he bobbed his head. “Thank you. Dwarves take great pride in their trades, you know.”

“I do, indeed.”

He moved a few things about on the bench, muttering to himself in a language of which you only knew and understood snippets. Then, he snapped his fingers. “Aha! There it is.” He peered at you over one shoulder. ���It’s so small, I thought I’d lost it.”

With that, he plucked up a small wood box and with his free hand, gestured to the table. “Sit, mesmel, and close your eyes.”

You did as he said, and as you sank into the straight-backed chair, couldn't keep from asking, “What are you about Mr. Durin?”

“You shall see. Keep your eyes closed.”

You knew he’d neared by the way the air stirred before you, carrying on it hints of steel, iron, leather, smoke, and man. Thorin’s scent. You would know it anywhere. Your heartbeat sped up for reasons you couldn't quite grasp. Butterflies fluttered in your belly and you didn't know why. 

“Open your eyes, amrâlimê,” came his tender whisper.

You did and you understood at once why your heart and stomach went wild. Thorin was before you, on one knee, and in his huge palm sat the small teak box. And within that small teak box, on a bed of rich black velvet, was the most beautiful ring you’d ever seen. It was simple and elegant, understated to the extreme—a simple square-cut sapphire surrounded by diamonds that were pure white and dazzling. 

“I know you miss your people,” he began, his voice low and growly, “and you miss your family but I was hoping that perhaps you and I might start a family of our own to make up for what you’ve lost. So, I was rather hoping you would say yes, should I ask you to marry me.”

“Thorin…”

He lifted the ring from its velvet cushion, the sapphire sparkling and throwing off flashes of light in all directions as it glittered in the firelight, and gently eased it onto your finger, saying, “Will you marry me?”

You couldn’t speak at first. Your throat squeezed too tight and your mouth was so very dry. Your hand shook and as you met his beautiful blue eyes, your own stung even as you nodded and managed to croak, “Yes.”

His eyes softened. His smile grew wider than any you’d seen in the entire time you’d been in his company and as you eased from your chair to sink to your knees before him, you slid your arms about his neck, and then you whispered back, “There is nothing to make up for, though, Thorin. What I’ve gained in return it far greater than anything I left behind and there is nowhere I would rather be than right here, right now, with you, my half-naked dwarven Santa Claus.”

He grinned, reaching up to sweep the cap from his head. “I forgot I wore it.”

“You wear it well, Mr. Durin,” you murmured as he gently pressed you down into the warm, if  slightly warped, floorboards. 

He hovered above you, eyes glittering in the firelight, and a moment later, the only sound was the soft crackle of the flames and your low sigh of utter pleasure. 

***

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