#oc: ecgwynn cousland

[pavus]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐒 — a Warrior, a Rogue, and a Mage.

[pavus]

OH, GREY WARDEN | Can you be forgiven when the cold grave has come?

[pavus]

lays in bed and thinks about ecgwynn and all of her mistakes and the fear she wears like shackles. thinks about how every night is another nightmare, so she doesn't put up her tent in camp until she's practically dead on her feet with exhaustion. thinks about the wound in her shoulder that never quite heals until the blight is over and how not even wynne or silas could manage to heal her. thinks about her vomiting in the dungeons of howe's estate the moment she set eyes upon him, how rendon mocked her for her persevering weaknesses, how freely her wound bled after using the pommel of alistair's longsword to beat his face into a mask of broken bone and gore. thinks thinks thinks.

[pavus]

I am glad to hear more of her (and your characters in general) so what were the main decisions that Ecgwynn made during the game? Did she choose to be the Queen or remain as Wardens with Alistair? What was her reaction to meeting Nathaniel? I love da and would like to hear more of your characters! Esp. about your Warden and Hawke.

getting this actually made me so giddy. thank you so much for your interest! it really means a lot to me, tbh.

as for the main decisions, ecgwynn's worldstate is a bit of a mess. because she didn't want to leave redcliffe in such a state in order to go to the circle, she allowed isolde sacrifice herself in order to save connor. she would have leaned towards siding with the templars if she hadn't been traveling with my husband's oc, silas amell. she made bhelen king of orzammar. in the brecilian forest, she attempted to make peace between the werewolves and the dalish, but ultimately failed, leading to them having to stand against the elves. at the end, she doesn't force alistair to become king; they remain wardens together with anora ruling. meeting nathaniel again was brutal on her. she can't look at him when she speaks to him, no matter the confidence she has in herself and her capabilities as a leader. when she looks at nate, she just sees howe. when she hears him talk, she hears his father. i'm torn on whether or not she'll conscript him, but more likely is her having someone give him a bit of gold and letting him choose his own path from there. and my hawke! sage is the ultimate workaholic. when she comes on screen, labor by paris paloma plays quietly in the background. she's desperate to provide for her family once malcolm dies, and then, with the blight, it becomes a desperation to see them all survive. which doesn't happen. act 3 sage is a very, very sorry sight. if you've spent decades of your life providing for people who are no longer alive, what do you do? who do you provide for? she puts everything she has into mage freedom at that point, supporting anders and his cause. she knows how to survive on the run, at least, and so does he.

[pavus]

can you give us more info about your warden :c and maybe about your other dragon age protagonists as well?

oh, i'd NEVER turn down an opportunity to talk about my warden! i'm playing origins currently, and i cannot stop thinking about her. so, ecgwynn is her mother's stormy daughter. bryce teases sometimes that she was born from a raincloud and not from him at all, that she's a cousland by name alone. (which ecgwynn hates, but she refuses to speak up against her father. eleanor is more vocal about her displeasure.) she is the most dutiful daughter anyone could ask for, right down to putting her bow aside to learn gentler arts if it's requested of her, right down to wordlessly accepting her father's efforts at marrying her to nathaniel howe. but despite that, she's always been rainy. she's always had a rumble of thunder in her voice. we all know how everything turns out, except... she nearly didn't make it out of castle cousland alive. two of howe's men managed to grab her while she and eleanor were trying to find her father, and they hauled her to a man with a great, gleaming axe, one already dripping with blood. they meant to kill them both, and it's a miracle that they didn't manage to do just that. still, the axe came down, burying into her shoulder, and giving her a wound that would stick with her through the remainder of the campaign against the darkspawn. (i love wounds in a narrative. i eat that shit up.) it was duncan who saved her.

just as it was duncan who offered her a place among the wardens. just as it was duncan who invoked the right of conscription on the bloodied floor of the larder and tore her away from her resigned mother and dying father. just as it was duncan who died shortly after, leaving her alone and aimless with a horde of darkspawn and an archdemon to contend with. she proved to be a soft-spoken, but mercurial leader, prone to flying off the handle in combat and putting herself into increasingly more dangerous situations for the sake of their tasks at hand. all the while, still suffering from the wound in her torso that refused to heal, no matter how much effort silas amell or wynne put into closing the wound. her relationship with the companions is complicated, but none more than alistair. i'm thinking about writing A Fic About Their Relationship, so i won't include many of the details here, but she isn't a good partner to him in the beginning. it's such an easy thing for a wound to spread to others, especially when it has proven impossible to heal. but god, their dynamic is so fun. and messy. and painful. i just. ah. i love her. I LOVE HER. and i should use this opportunity to talk about sage and naiya, as well, since i don't often get asks of this sort. but ECGWYNN.

[pavus]

my brain is mush i love her so much i would do anything for this grief-riddled hypersexual lonely terrified mess of a woman

not to be that annoying dragon age fan, but i made my warden in the dd2 cc and got thoroughly in my feelings about her.

[pavus]

help, i'm aimless and understimulated. do i make an oc page like this for trissa, my firbolg, or for ecgwynn, my cousland? or do i work on my general oc page with all of them?