#it would have been fun for lucanis because of you know the food and cooking and consumption thing happening

[vigilskeep]

intensely self indulgent but hear me out: au where spite is a hunger demon and lucanis does vampire stuff about it

[springagainafter]

Chatting about the Grey Wardens! (And some thoughts on the Shadow Dragons).

I wondered if the timing on this would feel smoother than it did for my Warden Rook and it does!

Warden Rook starts off the conversation by talking about how it's "nice to have a fellow Warden on the team" and they go on to talk about the Joining, the Calling, etc from there.

It's an excellent - and entirely different - conversation but my initial reaction was "there's a bug and this triggered too late" because by this time Davrin has been around for several plot quests.

Non-Warden Rook has met the First Warden briefly and Antoine and Evka (at least briefly) and the conversation happens around the time the team heads to the Hossberg Wetlands, so "hey, tell me about the Wardens" felt natural.

Non-Warden Rook is a little starry-eyed about them, aww.

Rook: Just curious, really. Wondering what it's like being a Grey Warden. Rook: They've always been these legendary warriors living apart from the world.

Davrin's response to that is "Don't know about that. I spent time with people who were bad right up 'til they took their vow."

From what Rook said to Lucanis in Treviso earlier, Shadow Dragons take a vow too ("I swore to keep Minrathous safe when I joined the Shadow Dragons. I had a duty") which he certainly takes seriously, so I've decided he and Davrin find common ground pretty quickly (Weisshaupt/the Wardens are, to his mind, Davrin's equivalent of Minrathous/the Shadow Dragons and vice versa. Rook's feelings towards Minrathous are more complicated than Davrin's towards Weisshaupt, but still).

The Shadow Dragons have some sort of vetting process (a codex entry mentions that Tarquin followed Neve around to determine whether or not to ask her to work with them; she was not impressed). No clue whether that's a morality check or just a "will this person reliably not turn us into the Venatori" check. I assume they're a little stricter than the Wardens, if only because they're a resistance group and because it's not a get-out-of-jail-in-exchange-for-fighting-darkspawn scenario.

Davrin: Weisshaupt is the last stop for the wrong sort. Davrin: If you're facing prison or worse, you can always join the Grey Wardens and take your chances with the blight. Rook: And just how, uh, wrong are the wrong sort? Davrin: Thieves, brigands, pirates, and the odd murderer now and then.

He's correct but also - probably in reaction to Rook being a little starry-eyed - not mentioning people like himself (who join looking for a good cause) or Evka (who joins after a Warden rescues her) or Antoine (who gets rescued by Evka and would have died from the blight otherwise).

(Warden Rook seems to have joined by choice like Davrin did; didn't run into any dialogue indicating that Rook was conscripted or had to choose between the Wardens and prison and the Joining conversation is pretty light-hearted rather than bitter.)

Rook's response to the line about thieves, etc. is "Sounds fun right up to the murdering." Pfff. Davrin says that "at least now they're murdering darkspawn."

Rook asked about the First Warden and Davrin said this (among a couple of other less flattering things):

So Davrin's little "he means well" speech and Rook's own sense of "humiliating the commander in charge of all these Wardens or trying to take over his job right now would be a spectacularly bad idea, especially when there's an archdemon just outside" will save the First Warden from getting punched. Military family and having worked with the Shadow Dragons (and having to take some orders there) also helps.

Rook: I've heard about Weisshaupt. Never been there.

Hoo boy.

Davrin explained some of the history of it and also mentioned (in response to Rook saying it sounded better than prison) that the food's always cold (they need better cooks!) and it's always drafty in winter.

Rook: *amused* You're really selling it. Davrin: It gets better.

:D

Rook: Okay, now I get it. Davrin: Best part is the Warden fighting alongside you. Maybe they've done some bad things in the past. Davrin: But after that day, it's different. There's some honor in their lives where there wasn't before. Davrin: Nothing like seeing redemption happen before your eyes.

The mayor the team encounters earlier - assuming he gets sent to the Wardens, which he unfortunately did not this time - is a great ingame example of this.

Rook: We all need that chance. Put past sins to right. Davrin: It makes the Wardens stronger to have people in our ranks who've lived in the shadows. Davrin: When the storm comes, you don't want farmers and florists fighting archdemons. It takes the wrong sort to put the world right.

XD

(Now would be a good time - much better than five minutes before he's about to stab one - to explain what killing an archdemon involves, but I can see why he sits on that information when - as far as I know - nobody's said anything about an archdemon popping up yet).

Rook commented that Manfred the Warden had a nice ring to it and Davrin was mildly amused and then gently shooed him off ("*laughs* How about we quit while we're ahead? See you around").

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

sorry not done yet after all but like. GOD this does put both a sadder and more hopeful spin on him not responding to Rook's flirting if you think about it in this context. he's been conditioned since childhood that anyone who shows him kindness or affection is going to be taken from him, if he responds to it. Sure, a casual flirt is fine, because they don't really mean it and maybe neither does he (without an emotional connection) and they will move on to whatever else is in their life soon. He flirts back at the coffee meeting but once things keep going, Rook keeps being kind and sweet to him, and it starts to feel real--he freezes up. He doesn't acknowledge it at first, he changes the subject and moves on. Because people who are kind to him get taken away eventually.

I talked before about how so much of Lucanis' narraitive is defined by control and this does feel like an extention of that here--he's afraid of breaking this pattern the same way he's afraid of changing other things in his life. His romance path is a fun flirt, then nothing nothing nothing THEN the almost kiss scene, where you seem to finally break through to him a little. The most important line to me in that scene was actually the lead-up to the not-kiss, where he says Rook always "manages to break apart [his] perfectly gathered clouds of doom". He's so used to expecting the worst at all times, but Rook keeps proving him wrong, and reaching out anyway. He ignores the flirting as a way to pretend it's not happening and he's not developing feelings (and therefore he can't lose them all again, like every other time), but Rook doesn't... so he steps off that well-trod path a little. He tries letting himself reach back, and Rook encourages him again instead of backing away.

He's not ready and the thought of losing control (or: losing Being Controlled in a way he's used to, more accurately) spooks him too much to continue, but it was at least a moment of proof that Rook does really mean it. they are kind to him AND want more of him in their life. And then, of course, Rook stays. They don't vanish, or get driven off by Caterina, and if Rook keeps pursuing the romance he allows himself to believe it's real and lets himself have feelings about them for real. He's no longer a shy cowering child with no way to determine his own life or other people's presence in it. He can finally start to believe that some people DO want to be close to you just because they like you, as a person, not just because of what you can offer them. And start reaching back instead of keeping himself locked up inside the way he used to.

And you can think of his cooking for everyone as an extension of this too, a way to show care for people around him in a more indirect way--something he can do that's NOT immediately obvious. There's a plausible deniability to it, that everyone else's food (except Bellara's) tastes worse, so he's just providing a service. But in his life he's been denied ways to show he cares for people--I can't believe Caterina (who he refers to by first name, never as grandmother, or nonna, or other affectionate terms) would respond well to overt displays of affection. Which also helps make the romance lock-in scene a little more sweet (if also a little more sad)--it's the one way he's gotten used to showing he cares. And he KNOWS it's "not enough" by which I mean I do think (despite Rook saying it IS enough) he does WANT to do more, and express himself more, but he has no practice at it yet because he's spent so long afraid of it. And being afraid of having it taken away as soon as he does. Ahg. Poor man. I need Rook to give him 1000 hugs asap.

man... in Veilguard it really is so so clear how much Lucanis yearns for connection, how much he laments having barely anyone who is a tangible long-term presence in his life. Illario and Caterina are IT until he meets Rook, he tells them.

but he grew up in the Dellamorte estate. A huge, huge manor that would not just have servants, but STAFF. payrolls full of people who clean and cook and keep the place running. And we know he had some amount of free reign around the place. He explored in the tunnels and basements and found the secret entrance/exit while playing alone. He learned how to make churros and cook other food from the kitchen staff. Someone taught him to knit. So... where are those people? Where's the kindly cook who became a second mother, or the maids who watched him play? He would know their names and remember them, if they were around long enough. And it's NOT just some rich boy privilege that makes him forget they're there, because we know he sees the working class as people who with real lives. In The Wigmaker Job, he knows elves in the alienage, who think well enough of him to let him use their secret routes around the city. He risks the whole mission and breaks rules to let one single serving maid go--they're not invisible or somehow lesser to him. He was raised as a Crow, he's been trained since he was a boy to be observant--he'd listen for the names and details about the lives of servants who were around him all the time as a child. And he is also kind and gentle, so he would reach back if they offered him any kind of affection

Which means their absence in his life is intentional. Caterina must have had the staff rotated often enough that he couldn't learn who they were, and discouraged anyone from talking to or connecting with the Dellamorte boys--she probably thought she was keeping them safe. Keeping them from having people who might matter and therefore could be used against all of them--not to mention it's way easier to slip a poisoned treat to a trusting child, or convince them to follow you out of the estate to an undisclosed location. Her paranoia after losing all her children and other grandkids warped into isolating the Dellamorte boys utterly from any kind of connection and affection outside of herself, and then she withheld it anyway, because she was afraid of getting hurt again too (<- not an excuse, still abuse). And she is NOT a kind woman, who would look over a transgression--servants disobeying her orders about staying away from her grandsons would mean losing their job at best and probably physical punishment along with it. Or maybe you just never saw that coworker who dared say something kind to a crying child again.

It's so sad. And makes it so much more meaningful that there WERE occasional times he got away with it anyway. I wonder how much those cooks risked when teaching him how a kitchen runs, and to make his favorite dessert. If they had some excuse for it, or were all sent away once Caterina found out. Of course he'd stop trying to make friends with any children of the staff his age, if any time he did, the whole family got moved to work at a summer villa in the country instead. If the people who cleaned his rooms were different every month. He'd notice that anyone who he tried to get close to just ended up out of his life entirely, and so eventually Caterina wouldn't need to keep isolating him intentionally as he grew. Lucanis learned. He started doing it himself.