#steps of faith

[knowthatiloveyou]

Watching Hannah Waddingham exercise some demons in person was something I'll never forget 🔥

[wadderz]

Hannah Waddingham performing at Thundergong tonight in Kansas City.

[autumnslance]

The Game World is an Abstract

Various dungeons, trials, and instances, take place in regions of zones we cannot otherwise reach. We can see other parts of the world, continuations of those zones, that go off the walkable/flyable map. We only really get parts of the capital cities, more districts and buildings often visible but inaccessible. New areas get introduced all the time, such as Paglth'an in Thanalan--much of which we can't get to, only see as we fly over its golden fields.

But even in the places we can travel physically, those areas are...compressed. Made viable to move for game play purposes. It would be impossible to show the true scale of most regions, most towns, even many buildings; not only would that be a ton of dev time and resources the game cannot budget for, but it would make getting place to place extremely tedious for players.

(They tried to a degree in 1.x, but it was also a lot of "identical tiles duplicated and turned" to give the impression of massive world areas--which also made it hell to navigate in more ways than one)

A good example is the Steps of Faith, the bridges spanning the roiling abyss between mountains and foothills, Ishgard's link from its peak to the rest of Coerthas.

Now that we can fly on Coerthas, overworld, the Steps of Faith look like this:

A very narrow bridge. Not terribly impressive--nor very practical, as it would be impossible to get multiple supply and trade carts in and out (their strict isolation was only really during the most recent Archbishop's nonsense in the last 20-odd years, hence the other city-states trying to get them back into the Alliance), nor march an army across. This is meant to connect an entire city to the world.

In the ARR Steps of Faith instance--reworked as a solo duty where the WoL fights alongside the Scions and various adventurers as well as Ishgardians--the bridges are massive, capable of fielding combat units as well as the giant siege dragon Vishap.

And of course, the great battle on the Final Steps of Faith in Heavensward's patches, where two great wyrms of the First Brood are on the bridges, as well as various other dragons, Ishgard's defenders, and our own final battle against Nidhogg.

In both versions of the Steps of Faith story instances, there are statues, towers, and defenses that simply aren't visible in the overworld versions.

So! Remember: the setting is MUCH larger and far more detailed than can be seen in the maps we have access to as players. The game world is a compressed abstract, travel times reduced for story as well as practical play reasons, and you have plenty of room in your writing and roleplay to expand on and add details to it as needed!

[lasatfat]

Steps of Faith

also on AO3

Alistair

It takes a little while for the snow to bleed into the valley, but bleed it does. It sinks down from the peaks just after midnight, covering the fields and meadows in a pristine, white blanket. The streams that criss-cross the land somehow never freeze over completely, and instead cut through the white in silver, turning it to patchwork. Alien shapes of trees reach up towards the lumbering clouds. Skyhold itself, on the other hand, is as impossibly warm as ever. The snow melts before it reaches the highest rooftops, falling as rain onto stone, wood and soil.

Alistair wakes from a fitful sleep before his wife and daughter have so much as stirred. He dresses as quietly as possible, and slips out of their room. He barely pays attention to the fine rain soaking into his hair and clothes.

Eireann is in love with another man. The thought almost fills his whole head, and the few others he can muster swirl around in the same sequence. They thump against the inside of his skull with every step as he descends the staircase to the main hall. His wife loves another man. Maybe that’s the kind of secret your husband would actually appreciate you keeping from him, Eireann, did you ever think of that? But he should stop overreacting, right? He steps back out into the open air of the courtyard. She might love Cullen, but she loves Alistair too. He knows it. He feels it in his very bones. But he can’t imagine feeling for someone else anything close to what he feels for her. It feels like a physical block. He reaches the bottom of that flight of stairs, and finds a wolf running at him.

Well, that thought spiral is over.

Alistair’s hand instinctively flies to his weapon. The wolf comes to a halt. Though as he looks closer – noting the shape of the creature’s ears, the size of its jowls, its barrel chest – Alistair wonders if it might be a wolf at all. It might sound insane, but this wolf looks very much like a mabari.

Even so, Alistair keeps his hand on his sword, though he stops short of drawing it from its scabbard. The not-wolf cocks its head, and then lowers it, folds its ears back, and crouches closer to the ground. Alistair recognises the submissive body language. He bends his knees slightly, and offers the dog a tentative hand to sniff, half expecting it to be ripped off. Instead, the dog smells him, then licks his hand companionably.

“Hello,” he coos, giving the dog a little scratch behind the ears. The fur is so thick that his fingers almost disappear into it.

“Fen!” a voice calls out. A petite, elven woman is sprinting for them. She’s dressed in a blue woollen tunic, with a fur-lined cape reaching high up her neck to perfectly frame her jawline, and a hat that doesn’t quite cover her ears, which are large even for an elf. A brown leather pack bounces on her back as she runs.

“Fen! I told you not to run off like that!” The not-wolf glances back at her, but doesn’t change its stance. The woman rests a hand on its head. She looks up, and makes eye contact with Alistair. “I’m sorry. He won’t hurt you,” she says, breathlessly. “Sometimes he forgets that he’s so intimi-oh.” Neither of them had been expecting Fen to push forward and start licking Alistair’s chin.

“He’s alright,” he laughs, pushing the encroaching muzzle away. “I’m Alistair.”

“Oh, I thought you were!” She grins at him, excitement filling her eyes. “I’m Kali, and that’s Fen trying to jump on you. Fen! Come here.”

Fen freezes, his front paws planted firmly on Alistair’s shoulders. He pushes off, with impressive strength, and trots off behind his master.

Alistair stands up, and offers her a hand, one that she shakes with gusto. Her golden eyes shine a little, the way Eireann’s do in shadow. “I’ve been hoping to meet you. We all heard the stories at the Arlathvhen, how you saved a whole clan from werewolves.” He has a vague idea of what an ‘Arlathvhen’ is, and he feels an odd little thrill of pride that anything he’d done would be worth sharing amongst all the Dalish clans in Thedas. There can’t be many humans that have been discussed positively in that setting. It’s an immeasurable honour.

“I didn’t even know werewolves were real until then,” Kali goes on, drawing Alistair out of his thoughts. “I thought they were just made up to scare people. You know, like cetuses.”

“Um…I think cetuses exist,” he replies.

Kali looks off into a point in the middle distance, the smile sliding off of her face. “Well, I know what nightmares I’m going to be having later,” she says, grimly.

“Which way are you going?” he asks, jogging her out of that particular thought.

“Oh, I thought I’d take Fen out to the fields for a little while,” Kali explains. “He loves the snow, but he hasn’t had a chance to play in it since Haven. I keep him very close in the mountains.”

Fen’s head had swivelled up and ‘round at the mention of snow, and he sniffs the air hopefully. Alistair gives him another scratch.

“Perhaps we could walk together,” he finds himself saying. She and Fen had already got him out of his own head, and he would rather like to stay out of it.

“Of course!” she says, cheerfully. “I’d like that. And Fen can be a bit difficult to wrangle when he’s excited.”

It doesn’t take long for Alistair to feel utterly comfortable around Kali. She’s so easy to talk to; it’s as if they are old friends catching up after a few years apart, rather than two people that had only met a scant few minutes ago. They walk through the village towards the farmlands, talking about the weather and the view, marvelling at the magic that must be embedded so deeply in the fortress.

The conversation turns back to Fen, and Alistair finds he had been half-right on both counts. Fen’s mother was a mabari, but she had obviously mated with a wolf, and the rest of the litter had been killed by her master. Kali happened upon them just as he was about to drown the last pup. She’d knocked him out cold – rightfully so, in Alistair’s opinion – and taken both the puppy and his mother with her on her journey south. Alistair had never heard of a mabari rejecting their master, but that certainly seems like a severe enough crime to trigger such a reaction. Kali had walked for days with the tiny thing clutched tight against her chest, taking him out to lay beside his mother whenever he cried for her. He was barely old enough to walk, but he was strong enough to survive it. After many days of slow progress, they’d run into the Adaars, and they’d travelled to Redcliffe together.

Of course, Fen had chosen Kali, the woman that kept him tucked away against her body when he was small. Alistair suspects that he’d imprinted on her even before he could open his eyes to see her.

And of course, Alistair has no way to follow up that story.

“My wife and I had a mabari,” he says, finally. His throat tenses, just a little, as it always does when a conversation turns to Mabu. She’d meant so much to him, after all. She still does.

“Tell me about her,” Kali says.

Maker, he doesn’t know how. How can you explain the love you feel for somebody else, even more so if that somebody has four legs and fur? How he’d been in a hole so deep and dark he couldn’t even feel sunlight on his skin, and when she couldn’t pull him out, she’d sat obstinately with him until he had the strength to climb? Put simply, he can’t. He can’t explain these things. So he remains silent, for a moment.

“She was a daft old thing,” he replies, eventually. Lovingly. “She loved her baths. Never met a squirrel she didn’t want to chase. My daughter learned to walk hanging on to her, and they slept curled up together every night. Poor Farah couldn’t sleep properly for weeks after she died. I had to hold her until she just couldn’t stay awake anymore.”

He turns to her, and oddly, she looks extremely puzzled. “Your wife did that?”

“Oh. No.” Alistair nods twice, seemingly to himself, and then bursts into raucous laughter.

Kali’s confusion lasts but a moment longer, before she evidently catches on, and her face cracks in a wide, toothy smile. Her laugh rolls out, bright and loud, and would be infectious if he wasn’t laughing so much already. Fen makes an odd, bemused warble, and Alistair laughs even harder. Maker, does it feel good.

“So,” Kali says, when the laughter has died back enough to allow her to speak, “tell me about your wife.”

Alistair chuckles himself to a stop. It’s a deceptively sore subject, right now, not that she could have known that.

“I expect you’ve heard of her,” he replies, casually. “The Hero of Ferelden. The Warden that ended the Blight.”

“Yes, yes, I know that bit,” she responds, “but what’s she like, really? I want to know who she is, not what she is.”

He’s beginning to rather like Kali.

“Above all else? She’s kind.” That’s such a small word, but it encompasses so much, everything he has ever loved about her. She’s kind to him, of course, but that’s easy. What amazed him, what still amazes him, is the kindness she showed to those that wronged her. “Loghain sent a Crow assassin after us. He poisons her, she stabs him. They’re both dying, and what does she do? She almost kills herself healing his wounds. She said, she didn’t want her last act to be murder.”

She asked him to stay with her, and he held her all night.

Kali smiles. “Oh, but she sounds wonderful,” she says. “I do hope he was grateful.”

“You could say that,” he answers. “We couldn’t have ended the Blight without Zevran. We’re still in touch.”

Kali nods. “You can’t say that about most assassins.”

Finally, they reach the first snowy field, and Fen is sent into ecstasy. He launches himself into a run, sending up clouds of white with every stride, tongue lolling out behind his head like a fleshy, pink streamer. Alistair can’t help but grin.

They stay for a while, in comfortable silence. Alistair makes a few snowballs, and throws them for Fen to chase; when he catches one, it explodes into powder in his mouth, sending him to new heights of joy. Kali perches on the fence, watching the dog, the birds flitting to and fro, and the clouds drifting lazily by. She pulls a small notebook out of her pack, and starts scribbling away.

“What have you got there?” he asks.

“I just wanted to capture that moment,” she says. She holds out the notebook, revealing a collection of squares, lines and circles marking out the rough shape of Fen, body curved in a jumping position.

“Hey, that’s pretty good!” he says.

“Thank you!” She rests the notebook back on her knee. “I’m a little rusty. I don’t find much time to draw these days.”

“Busy inquisiting?” he asks, with a smirk.

Kali chuckles. “I work with Lady Montilyet. She is our ambassador, but she is human, and the Dalish don’t often trust humans.”

“Understandably so.”

“Quite,” she agrees. “I’ve been trying to establish contact with other clans, but most of them wanted very little to do with us. They see this war as humans killing humans, and why should they get involved? I tried to explain how it threatened us all, but…” She looks up over the field, and there are tears glittering in her eyes. “Now Corypheus is destroying more of our history. If I had just explained better…”

Alistair puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

Kali shakes herself. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come out with me to hear me complain.”

“You can complain,” he insists. “I do enough of it.”

She chuckles, and goes back to her drawing. Alistair feels her eyes on him, occasionally, but whenever he looks at her, she is absorbed by her pencil and paper.

x x x

By the time Alistair gets back to their room, Eireann and Farah have already gone out. No doubt Farah will be with her tutor. He wonders if Eireann is with Cullen, and finds the idea doesn’t bother him as much as it did.

He finds a small piece of paper on his pillow. Frowning, he sits down on the bed and gently unfolds it. He recognises both of their handwriting. So it can’t be anything too negative.

I understand if you don’t want to talk to me right now. I’ll be back in the evening, and maybe we can spend some time together, if you’d like.

I love you so much. I’ll see you soon.

Underneath that are a few words written in a larger and rather messier hand, and accompanied by a small drawing of himself and Farah riding on an enormous, horned nug.

I LOVE YOU TOO, ALI!

And then Eireann’s hand resumes.

PS: I haven’t told her anything yet. She just wanted to sign your note. Love you again.

~ Eireann

Alistair smiles to himself. The distraction was exactly what he needed. He and Eireann have never had an exactly conventional relationship, after all. If she loves Cullen, let her love Cullen. She didn’t fight an Archdemon with him.

There’s a light knock at the door. He turns around, just in time to see another piece of paper shoved under it. He picks it up, and opens the door, looking around for the knocker. Kali and Fen are hurrying away, back to whatever job they were doing, but she briefly turns around to give him a wave and a smile, before disappearing through the door back to the main hall.

Puzzled, Alistair opens the folded piece of paper. It’s not a note. It’s a sketch of him.

Alright, now he can imagine fancying someone else.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good morning, Sleepyhead.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[tritoch]

i know a lot of people (very understandably) dislike the paladin job quests in ffxiv, particularly HW, but i do think it's fun that, now that the pre-ShB MSQ revamp is complete, paladins now have a very cool and thematic in-game storyline that happens without a word being spoken: the development of passage of arms.

none of the below is directly stated in the script, but imo it's a fairly obvious gloss on what the game presents, if you assume a paladin warrior of light. spoilers for all expansions through the end of 6.X.

in the new version of steps of faith, as vishap breaks through each ward protecting ishgard from attack, lucia mounts a final desperate effort to hold him back, with a very familiar looking animation:

but even lucia can't hold back vishap's flame alone, so the temple knights surge forward to assist her. their efforts make the shield visually more powerful and larger. the temple knights here band together in defense of ishgard, and their knightly resolve to protect their home is the difference between victory and defeat.

lucia and the knights do ultimately succeed in defending the last ward, as you have to defeat vishap before their shield falls or you lose.

later in heavensward, obviously, we will get ffxiv's most famous (failed) attempt at blocking something with a shield.

this moment can be read as fairly impactful on the warrior of light's development; as i've noted elsewhere, after the trauma of watching haurchefant bleed out in their arms at level 57, at level 58 paladins learn to channel their magic into healing (and it's called "clemency," or mercy. mercy for whom? who was guilty?), and as someone pointed out on that post, at level 58 dark knights used to get "sole survivor", letting them heal in response to a marked target's death.

for a time, you literally carry haurchefant's shield with you, and 3.3 very much literalizes in genre fashion the idea that even when you are standing alone, your fallen friends stand with you. you don't need to call any allies to stand at your side and raise their shields with you because they are already there, in spirit.

stormblood marks a pretty important turning point in the warrior of light as a combatant, in my opinion, and the text makes this clear in several ways. first, in pretty much all your jobs, you've now far exceeded your trainers and are pioneering new techniques. this is no less true of paladin, which for 60-70 abandons any trainers at all for you to show off your peerless skills in a tournament.

second, stormblood is straight up a story about you getting stronger. at level 61, zenos kicks your ass. at level 70, you kick his ass. why? because you fought and got stronger and developed incredible new techniques and became a one-man army.

for a lot of classes, this story lines up nicely with the big rotation changes or flashy new finishers on the way from 60 to 70. SMN is now busting out bahamut and casting akh morn; RDM gets verflare and verholy; DRG starts harnessing nidhogg's power directly through dragon sight and nastrond.

the tanks are divided in two: warriors and gunbreakers get huge damaging upgrades at 70 in the form of inner release and continuation, each of which lets them hit the same button many times for lots of damage and satisfying animations. paladin and dark knight get more protective abilities; dark knight gets the blackest night, and there's been plenty said about that already by pretty much everyone.

paladins get passage of arms. instead of a relentless new attack (and you get requiescat at 68, which is a way bigger deal for your dps rotation), your big reveal at 70 for zenos in your fight in ala mhigo is a superior way to protect your party, a shield that lets you stand for your allies so they never have to fall for you again. it's lucia's same shield, except you need no allies' shields to reinforce you, proof of your martial prowess and your ability to transcend limits, and perhaps in truth a reminder that you never really stand alone.

in many respects passage of arms should really feel like a paladin signature move to you now if you are playing it at this point, because you should be popping it in pretty much every fight (you are using your mits, right...?). basically every FFXIV fight has at least one big AOE with downtime that warrants passage of arms usage, usually after the mid-fight add phase with slowly filling bar. since that AOE usually drops during downtime, there's no reason not to pop passage of arms (which otherwise restricts your movement and actions), and even on normal, sometimes every little bit counts on a damage check even if it means dropping DPS (thinking here of harrowing hell P10N on release, which was...less consistent for a lot of roulette parties than you might hope).

so from 70 onward, passage of arms is in a sense a paladin warrior of light's signature move, and certainly the one a player gets to most actually enjoy (since if you're using it, you're by necessity not doing anything besides moving your camera and admiring your sick animation). it doesn't have any competition in terms of spectacle until confiteor, and those you're usually throwing out in the middle of movement.

it's such a signature, in fact, that the only other person shown using your one-person version of passage of arms is your greatest admirer, who studied your legend for over a century.

and it's when he fails (should've popped arm's length, bud) that the warrior of light decides they can't let their friends fall for them, and sends them away with the transporter beacon. this is all wrong: you were meant to die for them, not the other way around. yours is the shield that stands between your allies and defeat. it is you who will win this passage of arms and break your opponents lance. and you do.

and then later, when they need to quickly establish zero's domain as a place of fallen grandeur, the home of someone who once believed in heroes but is now a cool and cynical vampire hunter d, what do they use? a decayed statue of someone in the paladin endwalker gear doing the passage of arms animation, of course.

from a visible instantiation of knighthood as a joint effort to defend what is sacred, to a tribute to the fallen friends whose memories stand by you and animate you, to a symbol of the wol's power as emulated by their allies or darkly mirrored in other shards.

not bad for a mit button you hit once per fight and otherwise never think about!

[vroomvroomvroommf]

he said Oscar 😔 not Osc or Osco… divorce???

JK MCLAREN 1-2 MF!!!!! Oscar 1st win!!!!!!

[leslieseveride]

watched both these episodes today bc i miss my babies, and these two scenes have always given me the same vibes.

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[robbyykeene]

I actually really like robby and tory together even though I initially thought I wouldn’t, but their relationship is pretty unhealthy. the reason robby is so unbalanced without tory is because she is maybe the only person in his life who truly loves him and believes in him. so when he loses that, it only highlights the absence of it in the rest of his life and unravels every other aspect of his life and the relationships within it. and i just know that we are likely going to be forced to watch miguel and johnny give him “tough love” when he inevitably underperforms in the tournament—and im sure it will work—but it will also be unsatisfying as a viewer because robby doesn’t need tough love, he just needs actual love. he needs to be prioritized by the adults around him and supported unconditionally, even when he fails.

[knowthatiloveyou]

Hannah Waddingham rehearsing for Thundergong 2023

[scratchybeardsweetmouth]

i'm gonna go in a fetal position in a corner somewhere. also not Steps Of Faith using that first particular line on the tweet to introduce Hannah being added to the lineup. whoever's running Steps of Faith twitter you have been doing a great job at consistently giving it, my friend.

Hannah at Thundergong! I repeat…Hannah ah Thundergong!

[caeslxys]

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

[lasatfat]

Steps of Faith

also on AO3

Eireann

If you were to ask the people of Ferelden the worst thing they saw during the Fifth Blight – which you should never, ever do, by the way – you would receive a variety of answers. The blight corrupted the earth beneath their feet, blackened the sky above their heads. It killed their crops and mutated their livestock beyond recognition. The attacks were worse. The majority of darkspawn may be all but mindless, but in that mindlessness is the propensity for pure, cold-hearted cruelty, unmitigated by compassion or morality. The Fifth Blight exposed all the country to their bloodlust. The lucky ones have stories of children killed, friends mutilated, wives dragged from their beds in the dead of night. The unlucky ones are the subjects of those stories.

Even aside from the Blight itself, so many terrible things happened that year. Redcliffe’s dead rose to attack them after the arl was poisoned and his son possessed; Kinloch Hold was taken over by abominations and the Circle nearly annulled; the King of Orzammar died, and people were murdered in the streets in the unrest that followed; the Dalish elves of the Brecilian Forest were attacked by a pack of werewolves; the elves in the Denerim alienage were decimated by plague.

Eireann Surana saw all of these things, and more, during the Blight. However, the worst thing that she saw, the worst thing she has ever seen, was herself.

Or rather, a mockery of herself, a bastardized reflection. Her own body pinned Cullen’s to the floor, her own hands pawed at his naked flesh. Her own fucking voice teased him. And when she walked in, her own face turned to stare back at her. She may have killed the demon, but it’s still with her, hiding in that dark place in the back of her mind, where she hides all the things she daren’t think about too often. Now it has the Calling to keep it company too. Sometimes, she imagines that it’s the demon speaking those hushed words, luring her down to the Deep Roads, to her end.

She had thought that seeing Cullen again would bring it all back to the surface, but if anything, it’s done the opposite. She had been fond of Cullen, all those years ago. In Kinloch Hold, she was surrounded by apprentices she considered to be her responsibility, and the templars who considered her a threat to be contained. What room was there in all of that to be desirable? Then Cullen came along, and suddenly, she was beautiful. Suddenly, she was brave, and talented, and worthy of awe.

Eireann couldn’t bear the thought that he would only be able to see her as the face of the monster that tried to break him open. Thankfully, her fears had not been realised. He smiled, he stammered, he felt like the same old Cullen. He was moving forward, putting a life together, and her relief is beyond measure.

He hadn’t brought the demon back to her mind, but seeing him again has brought back something else. Something she had long banished from her mind as impossible.

Time alone. That will help her sort this all out. Eireann just needs to think through it all. Luckily, she and her family had been given a room within the fortress proper. To be honest, they would have preferred something in the village – her daughter, Farah, is used to having her own space – but she doesn’t want to be particular, not when Inquisitor Lavellan has been so generous. Besides, between Farah’s studies and her parents’ explorations, they only really use the room to sleep. It has two beds, a nice little dresser, a desk, and even a stained-glass window, depicting a tree on a field of golden grasses.

Eireann collapses onto the larger bed, and stares up at the ceiling. She thought she was past this. It was just a game, just youthful infatuation. They both knew that it couldn’t be more, that it shouldn’t be more. A mage and a templar…there was a lot wrong with that idea. But Cullen isn’t a templar any more, and it’s been more than a decade since Eireann belonged to a Circle. Now there are possibilities, and she’s made the grave mistake of allowing herself to imagine them.

The door opens with a loud creak. Eireann lets her head fall over the edge of the bed, to see her husband and daughter walk in, upside-down.

“Eri’s home!” Farah squeals. Eireann sits up as the girl hurls herself onto the bed beside her mother. She had never realised her capacity for love until she felt the first flutters of life stirring in her womb. She wraps her arms around her child, and just as the last time, and the time before that, and every other time since she’d first held a wet and squalling newborn in her hands, she wonders if she will ever find a limit for that capacity.

Then they both pull back, so they can each see the other’s hands; Farah’s move rapidly, but not so fast that her words are unintelligible. “I wanted to see the horses, and Varric took us to the stables. Master Dennet – he looks after all the horses – he put me on the back of one. He said he could teach me to ride one, like he taught Ali…”

“You can ride a horse?” Eireann asks, surprised.

“I could,” he retorts. “I don’t think I still can.”

Farah gives her a glowering look, and Eireann dutifully apologises for interrupting her, closing her good hand and rubbing in a circle over her heart. It was rude, after all.

“We saw some of the other animals in the stables too,” Farah continues, her slight indignant tone fading as she goes on. “Master Dennet showed us the Inquisitor’s hart, and the different animals. There’s a nug there as big as a druffalo, Eri! Blackwall said it was called a nuggalope. And then he took us for a walk up the mountain. We just got back.” She seems satisfied that she’s relayed all the events of the day, because she asks, “what about you? How was your day?”

Eireann puts up a thumb and shakes her hand, to indicate that her day had been fine. “I did all the things I wanted to, today,” she elaborates, “but it sounds like you had a real adventure.”

Farah nods, grinning. “Auntie Leli says I can go and see her ravens this evening, when they come in to roost. Can I, Eri? Please?”

“I don’t see any reason why not,” Eireann replies, “unless your father has one.”

Not that she’s ever called him that. They’re not mother and father, nor mama and papa, nor even mamae and babae. It’s always been Eri and Ali.

“Nonsense,” Alistair says. “She was as good as gold, as always.”

Eireann smiles. “Go on, then. We’ll come and find you when it’s time for supper.”

“Yes!” Farah jumps and runs for the door, grinning. “I love you!” she calls, before shutting the door behind her.

“Love you too!” Eireann shouts, though she’s sure Farah is already out of her earshot. She smirks at Alistair, who has already sunk down onto their bed. “Do you think she’d still love us if we said no?” she asks, dryly.

“Of course. Though she may not have been so vocal about it,” he chuckles. She perches next to him “Here. I brought something for you.”

He hands her a beautiful white flower; a single, thick petal sweeping out from a yellow pistil at the centre. She brings the flower up to her nose, and the scent is light and sweet.

“It’s perfect, Alistair,” she says, warmly. “Thank you.”

“Something else we have to thank Blackwall for,” Alistair explains. “I asked him where to find the most beautiful flowers in the valley. For the most beautiful woman in the valley, of course,” he adds, wryly.

She still has the rose he’d given her eleven years ago, the first token of his affection. He’d gone to the trouble of pressing it himself, between the pages of a dog-eared book of Fereldan history. She’d mentioned, at the time, that she’d never been given flowers before, and since then he’d made it his mission to bring her flowers wherever they went. She couldn’t possibly have preserved them all, but she rather likes this one.

“Your little walk up the mountain,” she begins, “was that to fetch this?”

“Well, yes,” he admits, “but I also wanted Farah to see the view. This place is beautiful. A man could get used to seeing all this every day.” He pulls her in to rest against him, kissing the top of her head. The silence would be comfortable, if Eireann wasn’t agonising. Is it selfish of her, to want more than this?

“Alistair, you know I love you, don’t you?”

He gives her a perturbed look. “Yes. Though I can’t say I love conversations that begin like that.”

Eireann can hardly blame him for being anxious. Such an accusation would he hypocritical, if nothing else; her own heart is thumping against her chest as if trying to escape it. She shakes herself mentally, and takes one of his hands, gently, in both of hers. “I spoke with Cullen today.”

“Oh?” Eireann can almost see his brain working underneath his skin, trying to connect all the pieces. “How is he?”

She almost laughs. “He’s better. He’s so much better than when I saw him last.”

“Right. Well, that’s good,” Alistair replies. “I know how much it bothered you, what happened in the tower.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she agrees.

Alistair frowns. “But that’s not what you want to talk about.”

It is, and it isn’t.

“It made me think about the way we used to be, you know? Cullen and I,” she says, haltingly. “We used to send each other notes. We’d pass them around corners, or leave them in books we’d seen each other reading. It felt good. I felt…”

“You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

Alistair’s expression is unreadable. He hadn’t looked at her like that in ten years, not since just before the fight with the Archdemon. She’d been so certain she would die fighting that battle, but the pain in his eyes had nearly killed her before she had the chance. As if he was falling apart before her, and refusing to show it.

“Alistair, I love you both.”

A moment of silence passes. It feels like hours.

“Oh.” Alistair exhales, his face still blank, and then…then he smiles. “Oh! Oh, Maker, I thought…” He trails off, but she can guess.

“You thought I was going to leave you?” she asks.

He averts his gaze. “It wouldn’t be the only time I was the inferior substitute. A king’s bastard gets used to that sort of thing.”

Well, if Eireann felt bad before, it was nothing compared to the warm, sickly guilt filling her stomach now.

“I know I’ve hurt you in the past…”

“I didn’t mean that,” he says, hurriedly.

“I was nearly killed by the Archdemon.” She had been swallowed whole, in fact. The only reason she’d survived at all was the smallest amount of Andraste’s ashes left behind in a pouch on her belt. “And I was so ill after Farah was born.”

“What are you talking about? None of that was your fault!” he protests, completely mortified.

“It hurt you all the same,” she says.

“Those things hurt me, not you,” he argues. “I expect it hurt you to consider marrying me to Anora, or when I had a child with Morrigan.”

She doesn’t really know what to say to that, other than, “I love Kieran.”

“I know you do!” he exclaims. “I’m only saying, as far as hurting each other goes, I think I outstripped you a long time ago. That’s why I wondered…if you might go back. To your first love.”

Eireann shakes her head. “I didn’t love Cullen then. I couldn’t. Maybe I thought I did, but…”

She pulls him close against her, and he rests his head on her shoulder. She turns to whisper in his ear. “Alistair, I didn’t know what love could be until I met you.”

She feels him smile against her cheek. “I think we taught each other,” he protests.

They stay like that a moment, entwined. His arms have always been the place she felt safest. She always waits for him to pull away, and always wishes that he didn’t have to.

“I love you, Alistair,” she says, softly.

“I know,” he replies. “I love you too. I’m sorry.”

“Hey.” She takes his face in her hands, looking into his eyes. (And his eyes are beautiful, a brown so deep that the reflections of the candlelight sparkle like stars). “You have nothing to apologise for,” she insists.

He smiles, and presses his forehead against her own for a moment. “You never sent me notes,” he grumbles, in mock petulance.

“That’s because I could talk to you,” she explains. She understands he had been teasing her, but she thinks it’s an answer he’d want all the same. “Knight-Commander Greagoir would throw a fit any time he saw Cullen and I together, so we wrote notes. He knew we were close and…he chose Cullen to be the Templar that killed me if I failed the Harrowing.”

Alistair recoils. “Just when I think I’ve heard the worst about the Circle…” He shakes his head, as if trying to get the thought out of it. “So, what did he say about it?”

Eireann blinks. “Who about what?”

“Cullen! You said you’d talked to him,” Alistair replies.

“I didn’t tell him I was in love with him!” she cries, incredulously. “I was hardly going to tell him that before I told you!”

“Oh…no, of course you weren’t.”

“I don’t even know if I should tell him. It’s not like anything will happen. I just…” She halts. “If this Calling is real, and it does kill us, I don’t want us to have secrets from each other when it does.”

Alistair nods. “Well, in that case, I have a confession too.” He looks her in the eyes, deathly serious, and her stomach twists a little. “I don’t actually like cheese at all.”

“Oh, for…” Eireann gives him a playful shove. “You are incorrigible.”

 “Well, you always tell me that you love me just the way I am. I’ve no motivation to change,” he protests. He presses a firm kiss to her cheek, and pulls her into another warm hug.

“Are we alright?” she asks.

“Of course we are,” he says. “We’re fine.”

But his grip is too tight, his shoulders too tense. When they climb into bed later that night, he lies with his back to her. He isn’t fine.

[r0semultiverse]

[novelconcepts]

In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.