#i posted so much about harding and emmrich but i just want to put out there that i am also absolutely in love with davrin!!!!

[a-whiff-of-a-dream]

Hot and bothered

[dngrs-untld-hrshps-unnmbrd]

Graven Hearts

After being unofficially banished from the Mourn Watch, rebellious Lisbette must recruit one of her former professors, Emmrich Volkarin, to help her defeat two ancient Elvhen gods. Hurt that her favourite professor never stood up for her when she needed him, Lisbette takes delight in provoking the handsome, silver-haired necromancer, perhaps enjoying herself a little too much.

Female Rook | Age Difference | Daddy vibes | low key bratting | Hurt/Comfort | Eventual Smut

Chapter One

The Lighthouse is a sheer delight to Emmrich. The rooms given to him seem to shape themselves around him to his ideals and tastes without him needing to ask. He and Manfredd spend a happy afternoon putting all his things away, and Emmrich makes mental plans for how he may help this charming group of people. They are facing two ancient Elvhen gods, and the task before them is forbiddable. 

Manfredd goes out to explore the lighthouse, and Emmrich sits behind his desk to write letters to his colleagues in the Mourn Watch. How does one post letters in a place like this? He supposed he’d figure it out. 

There’s a soft knock on his door, but before he can call out for the person to enter, the door opens, and Lisbette appears. 

He smiles at her, and opens his mouth to say, “It’s wonderful seeing an old student doing so well,” but the expression on her face makes the words turn to bone dust in his mouth. She’s smiling at him, but it’s a hard, fixed smile, very unlike the friendly welcome he received at the Necropolis. 

But now he thinks of it, Bellara was the one doing most of the talking. Lisbette was merely polite.

Without a word to him, Lisbette takes a long, slow walk around the room. She’s wearing comfortable off-duty clothes, a pale shirt tucked into high-waisted pants. The ensemble is nothing special, but she somehow looks lovely in them. Her masses of curly red hair is down past her waist, and the freckles on her face and glassy green shards in her eyes catch the sunshine.

Lisbette pokes at a skull on a shelf. Examines a bottle. Her attitude is irritatingly overfamiliar, as though she feels she has a right to both examine his things and ignore his presence. She was never rude to him during her student days. Lisbette had been rebellious and provocative on paper occasionally, but in his classes, tutorials, and private meetings in his office, she’d always behaved with manners and respect. 

Emmrich sits back in his high-backed chair and watches her with what he thinks of as his chilliest gaze. Though her student days are over and her relationship with him is quite different, he still expects manners and respect.  

Finally, she saunters over to him, though she still doesn’t look at him. Her fingertips trail across the surface of his desk. “ Coming in here reminds me of being called into your office, professor.”

“How so?”

“I can feel waves and waves of your disapproval, just like the old days.”

“What do you believe I disapprove of?”

Lisbette laughs softly. “Always a teacher, aren’t you?”

“Lisbette. If you don’t want me here...”

“I need you here,” she says with a careless shrug, and perches on the edge of his desk. 

Emmrich opens his mouth to tell her not to sit on his desk, but then closes it again. She wants to provoke him, and he feels certain that he mustn’t be provoked. He supposes she wishes she didn’t need him. Needing someone from the Mourn Watch upsets her after she was unofficially banished from the faction. He feels nothing in particular about that. He wasn’t there when the decision was made, and it’s good for a young person to learn that their actions have consequences.

“You have gathered together quite a team,” he tells her, hoping to change the subject to a topic they can both enjoy. 

“Yes, they’re like family. It’s good to have family around me again.”

Family?

He feels his heart sink. 

Lisbette was found abandoned as a baby in the Necropolis. Like him, the Mourn Watch raised her, and just as it does to him, the Mourn Watch means family. Home. Love. 

Or it did until they banished her.

How would he have felt if the only family he’d ever known shut him out and told him to leave? Has she had one kind word or letter from anyone at the Mourn Watch in the year since?

But Lisbette has landed on her feet, he reasoned. She’s a talented young mage and she’s navigating these unfamiliar waters with confidence and apparent ease. 

All the same, him being here hurts her. Angers her. She doesn’t want anything from the Mourn Watch, but she has no choice. 

He can find a way to win her over, surely.  

In a kinder tone, he begins, “Lisbette, what happened a year ago...”

She scoots around his desk toward him, and then reaches for a book on the far side of his desk. Doing so, she splays herself across his lap in a bewildering manner. His fingers flex on the arms of his chair as he stares down at her. 

Lisbette sits up and pushes her red curls out of her face with a breathless smile. “ Alvarus’ Treatise on the Undead . I’ve always wanted to get my hands on this.”

There’s better light from the window if she’s facing the other way, and she perches on the arm of his chair. Emmrich finds himself with his arm around her, but pulled back as far as he can so as not to touch her inadvertently. She wriggles back, closer to him, making that task difficult for him.  

“ Lisbette, there are chairs for both of us.”

As she turns the pages, she slides further from the arm of the chair until she’s half sitting in his lap. “I’m fine here, professor.”

“Lisbette.”

“Hm?”

“ Lisbette .”

She looks up at him with a dazzling smile, her face just inches from his. “You’re handsome when you’re annoyed.”

“I know what you’re doing. You dislike that you need help from me. You’re provoking me because you’re angry with me. If we could have a mature conversation...”

She blinks innocent eyes at him. “Don’t be silly, professor. I’m provoking you because it’s amusing me.”

Slowly, she sinks even further into his lap. Her bottom feels soft against his bony thighs and very warm. Lisbette rests against his chest, licks her fingertip, and turns a page of the book. 

He grits his teeth. If she won’t speak seriously, he will. “I will speak with the Mourn Watch. You’ve been punished long enough and you should be allowed to return to the order .”

The smile fades from Lisbette’s lips. She reaches up and touches the silver strands of his hair, and then combs her fingers through the locks. Her touch feels surprisingly sweet. 

Then she boops his nose with her forefinger. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve had better adventures since being told to leave, and now I have a Mourn Watch professor all to myself. He’s going to help me save the world.”

He gazes at her, feeling unimpressed by her arch tone and the way she’s touching him. She might be their leader, but he was not her pet.

“How may I be of service?” he asks icily.

She muses on this for a moment. “Do you have any advice for me, professor?”

“Your spells were ragged today. Your staff work was sloppy, and your incantations poorly aimed.”

“You called out Beautifully done, Lisbette at least three times.”

He had, hadn’t he. He was delighted to be invited onto the team, and he’d been impressed and inspired by the leadership his former student had shown. The way she smiled at everyone. Her warm confidence. He’d congratulated himself that he’d been responsible in part for the young woman she’d become, the old fool. 

Emmrich clears his throat. “I must encourage as well as correct.”

She tilts her head teasingly toward his. “Ah, so you encourage me in public and correct me in private?”

“You’re trying to provoke me, young lady.”

Lisbette reaches up and ruffles his silver hair. “I am provoking you. Thank you for the book.” 

She snaps the volume closed, gets up from his lap, and saunters out of his room with an maddeningly hypnotizing sway of her hips. 

Emmrich opens and closes his mouth. Too late, he thinks of something to call after her. “Lisbette! I was reading that book.”

But the door closes behind her, and he thinks he hears her laughter in the corridor. 

__

Oh, Lisbette and Emmrich, you're both in so much trouble. Not the same bit of trouble, but definitely a lot of it, and together. Thank you for reading!

CHAPTER TWO

[serenityfails]

part two of my DATV thoughts, now that i've finished the game. i think i'm gonna focus on my feelings about specific character arcs in this one.

VARRIC: i touched on this in my previous post but varric isn't really a character in this game, it's just rook and solas's shared projection/idea of who varric was. which i do think is actually an interesting concept. i just think it's noticeable, once you learn that fact, that everyone just moves on instantly. i don't need the game to indulge me with hours of clothes-rending mourning, i just don't believe his death would go totally un-remarked upon.

HARDING: i need a lot more selling on the idea that she cares really deeply about her dwarven heritage. it's possible i missed some important banters or something on this subject from her, but as it stands i didn't feel, based on who she was before, that it really mattered to her that much. she's a surface dwarf, born and raised-- she certainly had some thoughts about that in the descent DLC, but the vibe i got was "yeah those guys don't associate with the likes of me, but fuck 'em, I'm Fereldan", not "gee i wish i could reconnect to The Stone". even just some tidbits about her family. she brings up her mother all the time-- something about her mother feeling a sense of loss there, or something emotional to link her thematically to the titans.

lacking that connection, it felt even more glaring that they straight up PUT VALTA IN THE GAME, because that's HER story, not harding's. it just doesn't line up for me personally.

i like the idea of anger vs joy in concept, and i liked the idea that harding actually had a lot of animosity towards solas that she felt ashamed of. but i think that animosity should have started from a more personal place (maybe what happened with corypheus and the inquisition, then varric) and blossomed from there into the wider question of the titans. if that was the intention, i didn't really see that in the final version.

BELLARA: She's Fine.jpeg. i think it would have been good to get a clearer idea of who/what Anaris is, because i did feel like that aspect of her story was underbaked and her brother's death was foreshadowed so hard it was basically haus of decline's "i think we're gonna have to kill this guy, steven" comic, but that was an issue i had with multiple character plotlines. i like her and Neve's relationship and i will be sexualizing it. thank you.

NEVE: i can't really take her Dark Knight bit seriously but that's okay. (she's Crime Boss Batman in my game now, and her boyfriend is the leader of the Crows, so good for her.) I like how she plays off the other characters more than I think I like her in isolation. i also feel like i was missing some of her backstory, but maybe you get more if you romance her?

LUCANIS: i want him to be a bigger mess. he's too well-adjusted. i say this having hardened him in my game... i was cut off from romancing him but i still feel like he was taking everything too well and being too reasonable about everything. i want a bitch with messy hair and yellow teeth scrabbling around like a fucking goblin okay he's been imprisoned under the ocean for a YEAR and he's POSSESSED make him get FREAKY WITH IT. he lives in a pantry but he always looks like he just stepped off a magazine cover. i can't jerk off to this

DAVRIN: they could not possibly have told you any more clearly how precisely his entire plotline will play out from mission one, so it was boring in that respect, but i enjoyed all the Wardeny lore of his questline so i'm okay with it. I also called the monster being Isseya so i get a gold star for being a big fucking nerd. His romance has moments of juice and then peters out a lot at the end, which is tragic. I actually enjoy his perspective as a Dalish elf that felt confined by that life and left it on purpose, but I think we don't get enough of a sense of the Regular Old Dalish vs. the weirdasses in the Veil Jumpers to feel the weight of that choice.

EMMRICH: i love this bitch he's so fruity and fun. it's deeply cute that he's genuinely shocked and hurt people find necromancy creepy and weird. i razzed him about it once and he got so genuinely sad about it i was like omg... baby.... i'm so sorry peepaw!!! Hezenkoss is the best villain in the game because she's just like what fucking ever no relatable motivation no grey morality it's mad science time!!!!!!!! my friend said she "made a bone Jaeger out of rich people" and you know what. she was right to do that. #womeninSTEM #supportwomenswrongs

i let manfred die. in the moment, i was actually just super mad at the game for so blatantly foreshadowing WE ARE GOING TO KILL THE CUTE LITTLE SKELLINGTON that i was like fuck you, the skeleton dies. i felt bad about it after. but also emmrich becoming a lich was REALLY funny so i don't feel THAT bad.

TAASH: there is a good character in there underneath the corporate mandated HR meeting. another point where the script needs less handholding, more time to breathe, and more in depth exploration of the qun's take on gender, which in the past games i have found genuinely compelling, and gender in thedas in general (which the games already have a patchy track record on).

i was also mad at the game for so clearly flagging their mom's death, and it seemed so reversible because like... hi we have a party full of mages with healing magic what exactly is the issue here, BUT WHATEVERRRRRRRRRRR. (mommy, why didn't aerith use a phoenix down?)

i also have to apologize to Taash for completely ruining their life and making it hard to connect to anyone ever again by killing off Harding. i think it's crazy Harding got to spend her last months on the planet getting the daylights fucked out of her by someone who is at a rough estimate ten years her junior and twice her size, though, good for her.

post is already too long. i will post about my feelings on Solas, Lavellan, and Mythal some other time.

[butterflydm]

It's ~official~ (DAV posting)

I don't know how much of the game is left but it feels like things might be picking up towards the endgame. My save game data tells me that I'm currently over seventy hours into playing this character (though that includes menus and such, I assume), so no complaints if we are headed towards endgame! But I am loving the game, so I will be sad when we reach the ending (though I do already have my plans to replay as a dwarven and/or Shadow Dragon Rook).

Put down those two blighted dragons that attacked Treviso and Minrathous, so that's a win, and I shot a ballista bolt into Ghilan'nain. So that was a pretty big success, and I'm back to doing all the side quests and character quests that popped up in the aftermath of that story quest.

We finished through Harding's personal quest and confronted the Titan's Shade, so she's now officially a Hero of Veilguard. It feel fitting that she be the first one to get that status, considering that she came from DAI and all. She's finishing what the Inquisitor started.

I really liked learning more about the history of the dwarves and the Titans, heartbreaking as it could be at times. And since I took Bellara with me on Harding's personal quest, it was two elves that were talking to her at the end. Unintentional on my part there, but it really made a lot of Harding's lines feel like they resonated even more, because it was the elven people who benefited from what Solas and the other elven gods did to the Titans.

The damage that history does feels like a big theme - both in things like the elven gods being the ones who shattered the Titans, or in things like those same elven gods trying to recreate their glory days of being worshipped. One of the lines that Harding says at the end of her personal quest - "we will thrive in spite of you" (and having two elves there definitely gave that line a special punch; I wonder if that line is different if you don't play as an elven Rook or if Harding processes that part any differently if you're also a dwarf) just really felt powerful.

Sins of the past would be an other way to put it -- that applies in most every case we've seen. Regrets that stem from the past.

I got confirmation on a few of my guesses from last time -- the Gloom Howler was a Gray Warden who left on her Calling. More specifically, she's an elven mage who blighted the griffons on the First Warden's orders in order to win the fourth Blight.

Emmrich also interrogated Rana's body and confirmed that Illario is a traitor and sold Lucanis out to her in order to gain his place as First Talon of the Antivan Crows. But she was supposed to kill Lucanis, not use him for her experiments, so Illario was genuinely shocked when Caterina learned that Lucanis was alive and imprisoned.

Harding haunted by the trauma of what was done to the Titans centuries ago (millenia ago? i haven't plotted out the timeline), the splintering that created the dwarven people. Bellara is haunted by her brother, who she thought died chasing the very elven artifact that we first found with her (the archive spirit) but who made a deal with one of the Forgotten Ones of the elven gods instead. What she could have been, a deal that she fears she would have made if put into his place.

Emmrich haunted by an old colleague and Neve by an old case that got away.

Darvin is haunted by the ugly legacy of the Gray Wardens and what it means to be willing to do anything to stop the Blight, no matter what the collateral damage may be. Even if that's an entire species.

Taash's struggle has been against gender expectations, as set against the background of growing up with a Qunari mother and having escaped the Qun. A legacy of their birth culture, and deciding what they want to take from their differing cultures they grew up in. Not the sins of Taash's past but of the culture that they escaped from but still feel some connection to.

And Varric, of course, is haunted by Solas -- a friend that he's worried he can't save (and who is the echo of a friend that he believes he failed to save -- Anders and Solas have a LOT in common).

(the list of things that Solas is haunted by span the entire game lol)

On a lighter note, I took Harding and Taash out together and they flirted! <3 And then they flirted again back at the Lighthouse! <3 Harding had a dream about Taash! <3 It's charming! <3

And to get to the title of the post -- I went through Lucanis's Inner Demons quest and then we talked in the kitchens afterwards and we are officially exclusive.

It was really great too -- the quest. Spite leading me through the prison that Lucanis had constructed around himself, because he's afraid of himself after what happened in the prison. Being able to support Lucanis and also to talk to Spite to let him know that... that Lucanis isn't trapping him in that prison deliberately. It's just that it takes time for people to heal from deep trauma like that. I love how it was entirely dialogue-based and not about literally fighting to get to Lucanis but about talking to the parts of himself that were afraid and hiding.

It seemed like a good place to stop for the weekend, since I do have some non-DAV things to do.