#sule ralaferin

[armor-goblin]

Belated OTP questions!!!! Josie x Ralaferin: 8, 5, 25; Brynn x Sera: 23, 11, 1, 26; Sera x Tabris heist au: 13, 17, 24, 28; Miri x Cullen: 6, 15, 23 again, 30! (I picked my favourite questions and then mixed up for the various ships, feel free to answer whichever questions come easy!)

OH BOY this is a massive list and it’s mostly under the cut!!! 

5. What activities do they enjoy together? (Josie/Sule)

i think they both have their distinct interests; sule’s is to be alone and outdoors, sketching, learning, examining, while josephine’s lies in words and phrases and talk and socializing. sule gets her to enjoy the occasional day hike or climb, while josie gets her to dress up once in a while and go to a party. they probably really like working together in the evening, sitting in the same room within touching distance.

8. What were their first impressions of each other?

sule is attached to the inquisition as clan ralaferin’s expert on elven architecture and history, and shows up with the rest of her clan’s delegation basically because the keeper offered her services. she hasn’t been expecting much from a big castle full of shemlen. josephine, in turn, has almost no experience with dalish clans, so she’s half expecting an elderly expert with decades of knowledge. they are both surprised.

sule’s immediate impression is “oh shit she’s eloquent and gorgeous, oh creators why can’t i speak and why didn’t i wear something nicer???? there is MUD ON MY TOES. she is so pretty. i love her accent. i want to listen to her talk. i hate listening to people talk, why do i want to listen to her talk. mythal help.”josephine’s immediate impression is about 50% “oh she’s MUCH younger than i thought” and about 50% “why was this person chosen as a liaison, all she is doing is frowning and she’s not saying anything and wait. now she’s blushing. oh that’s actually really cute.”

25. What moves do they know work on the other?

you can pry elves with big sharp teeth from my cold dead hands so i think neck kisses and nibbles just like…make josephine melt completely. sule is just completely overwhelmed by holding hands with a pretty girl, tbh. sex she can handle without embarrassment, but josephine rubbing a thumb along her hand instantly makes her blush and stammer.

brynn/sera, sera/tab, and miri/cullen under the cut!! all from this prompt list, btw. 

1. What are things they both find funny? (Brynn/Sera)

pranks are HILARIOUS, especially when they are subtle, and more likely to confuse or mildly annoy than to damage. also, so are spittakes. they are five years old.

11. What causes them to fight?

i think sera can be a little callous, and she’s often inclined to strike out before she thinks if she feels offended, but she’s also got a very clear moral compass of her own despite her style of justice being very retributive. to brynn she’s both a breath of fresh air and a bit of a pain in the ass. in contrast, brynn can come off too stolid or stuffy, and she tends to push herself through pain, which then gets misread as not actually being in pain, and causes conflict between them – and brynn’s a little more ‘help everyone’ in her morals. neutral vs chaotic good. i think they argue about consequences too – sera who avoids them like the plague because they feel confusing, and brynn who ran face first into a pile of them and can’t ignore them anymore in good conscience.

23. Write a ~300 scene between them with no dialogue, only body language.

outsourcing this to another post because. i have. an idea. i have several ideas. stay tuned it’s the scene where they meet for the first time and i have pLANS 

26. What are their favorite parts about physical affection/sex?

sex is just fun for them. sera is twenty-something and stupidly flexible, brynn is thirty-something and has both experience and muscle. sera is also, i think, a very physically affectionate person when she’s allowed to be, and she likes touch and needs touch; to someone like brynn, kind of touch-starved who also loves and needs touch in her life, this is a fucking godsend and there is a lot of ridiculous cuddling positions. they make a point to try new different things for novelty, and then they go back to the same sweetness all over again, over and over. it’s light and fun and adventurous and never quite the same twice.

13. Name something they would never do for the other person. (Sera/Tab)

compromise their principles, i think it boils down to. sera’s not going to dress up like an elven servant and be berated for any reason, even for a good heist or to save someone. she’s going to find another way around that doesn’t involve her being humiliated because being humiliated is pretty much her worst nightmare, whereas for tab that’s a little more par for the course; she’s used to it and can abide it for the sake of a job, while sera can’t. and tab can’t just abandon people in need. forcing herself to leave denerim was one of the hardest things she’s ever done and she has literally no ability not to throw herself in and meddle when she sees a problem. chevalier pushing an elf around? yeah, she’s going to be an idiot and walk into that fight, whereas sera is going to push her to walk away because it’s not their business.

17. What senses (sights, smells, feelings, etc). remind them of each other?

sera for tab: the heavy metal tang of coated chainmail that gets up in your nose and sits on your tongue. the sharp high-nasal smell of hair bleach, and the fine cobwebby feel of damaged dyed hair between her fingers, and the scrape of a razor over warm dark skin. the intimacy of shaving someone’s head for them, and feeling their pulse in their neck as you turn their head to catch the last of the long hairs. small pastries made sweeter by the stealing of them, eaten in the high-up places where nobody sits but you and her, crumbs all down your front and a flask of shitty warm wine and the breeze you’ve missed down in the alleys.

tab for sera: shoulders. ripped cloth, patched until it can’t be and then left to hang loose anyway. the gentle clatter of arrows in a quiver and the twang of a bowstring as it’s strung lost under the grunt of effort it takes to string it. when you leap off a roof and for a minute you are flying and you hit the landing and all your bones crunch together but you still feel a little bit flying, trusting nothing but your body to carry you across the next gap.

24. What is something they have each had to forgive the other for?

their mistrust. tab comes to sera hot off the heels of another failure, shianni killed in her own bannorn, and her abiility to trust is eroded; sera has never been all that trusting in the first place, and she has no idea what to do with this hard-eyed brooding woman at first. they just aren’t in a place to trust each other at first.

28. Write a ~300 fantasy one of them has about the other. 

Minna watches her, in the noon light.

She’s pretty, and animated, her hands mouth eyebrows ears all working in furious concert as she fletches an arrow. She doesn’t do it well but she does it anyway, with an old paint tube full of homemade slug glue between her teeth and her hair like wisps of straw or willow leaves in fall or something pretty like that, flying every which way in the breeze up here. 

She likes Sera’s hands. They’re not dainty so much, they’re broad and thin-fingered and usually covered in nicks, but they’re….nice. Minna’s aware hers are blocky in comparison. She’s chosen to ignore that for now, watching Sera do a finicky task gently with intense, exclusive focus, her fingers sure and precise as she sticks the feather in place. 

She’s supposed to be sharpening a dagger. Her hands are still doing it, but her eyes are on Sera’s fingers. 

Sera would be good at touching, she decides. They’ve been here in Val Royeaux for something like a month and what Minna misses most about the rotten-tooth ache of Denerim Alienage is touch, kind and caring touch. She misses her father’s pat on her shoulder before she falls asleep and she misses Shianni curled up behind her on a lazy winter morning, hogging the blanket. She misses Soris’s arm around her shoulders. She misses ruffling the hair of children and tweaking Shianni’s ear when she swears particularly colorfully. Sera was never really part of the alienage, but she could see Sera fitting in, running her fingers along the bricks. Running her fingers through Minna’s hair. 

Mm. That’s not a thought she’s supposed to be thinking. She’s supposed to be paying attention, running over the plan, the entrances, the cover if she’s caught, the lock she’ll have to pick. Sharpening the dagger.

Okay, okay, for maybe two seconds she’ll think about Sera. She’ll let herself think about sitting on the floor and Sera cross-legged behind her, knees on her shoulders, doing…something to her hair. Combing her long thin fingers through it, scratching her scalp a little bit. Rubbing the short shaved hair just above her ears? Yeah, that’d feel good. Getting a few of the knots out, maybe, her hair’s knotted much more since she’s started bleaching it. She’d be gentle with it. Tug and tug until the hair comes loose and then scratch Minna’s scalp in reassurance, maybe even rub her ears a little bit – 

Sera looks up and says muffled around the tube of glue, “What?”

Minna very nearly cuts her fucking thumb off. 

15. What are traits they dislike in one another? (Miri/Cullen)

HAHA. THE LIST GOES FUCKING ON. really tho, a lot of the traits miri and cullen dislike in each other are traits they also dislike in themselves, reflected across each other and more visible for it. mireille gives cullen a lot of shit about glossing over his past because she’s deathly afraid of the things she may have forgotten, the hurt she could have caused, and the fact that she can’t remember to hold herself accountable makes her sharp with him. cullen finds her hypocrisy and her utter, bone-headed stubbornness infuriating because he sees the same concepts in himself – he unconsciously lets rules apply differently to himself, despite the fact that he too needs to practice self care and needs to actually acknowledge his flaws in constructive ways instead of martyring himself, and he knows it’s unhealthy, but seeing it in her means he can latch onto it. miri hates that self-martyring streak in him because she has a bit of one too, and must take on the brunt of the pain for everyone, no matter what. cullen hates the denial in her because he sees it in himself and knows it doesn’t help (and yet he does it anyway). they both can be a little single-minded and they both can be very…set in their ways? they’ve both got specific, prescribed ways to solve problems, and they both default to those methods instead of looking for compromises.

traits that they don’t each have: mireille can be a little bit pedantic, which cullen finds a little bit exasperating, and sometimes she gets distracted by her own wit and plays around being sarcastic and biting when he’s trying to be serious about something. cullen can be a little too stern and serious and sometimes takes her flippant complaining more seriously than she intends it, which is a bit frustrating for miri on occasion. 

23. Write a ~300 scene between them with no dialogue, only body language.

[armor-goblin]

More abc questions!!!! The whole of joy for the twins and the whole of never have I ever for tabris (or for the twins B} )

J1: what makes them happy?sule is happiest when she’s doing something, being productive; she draws and sketches and carves almost all the time, and she likes sweet wine and creating things with her hands and being alone. taryn is happiest when he’s talking to people and listening to their stories, and he also really likes animals, plums, poetry and songs. 

J2: who makes them happy?taryn and sule mostly exasperate each other, but they ultimately know each other better than anyone and make an excellent team in most of the things they do, and they make each other happy. they’re both also very fond of their clanmates, especially the keeper and a few aunts and uncles, and taryn has a number of dear friends in other clans. in the inquisition, they stick close together for a long time, but sule becomes close friends with lace harding and taryn slowly befriends solas and varric and bull and krem and the chargers specifically because he wants their perspectives and stories.

J3: are there any songs that bring them joy?taryn has a good memory and collects songs like seashells on a beach whether they’re dalish in origin or not, so he’s usually singing or humming something, and sule is usually tapping her foot along or making up nonsense words to whatever tune he’s humming. they both enjoy music a lot.

J4: are they happy often?i would say both of them are happy pretty often – taryn has a little more patience and diplomacy than sule does, sule tends to express her feelings more bluntly, but both of them have careers and friends they deeply love that bring them a lot of joy. (in an au where one of them’s inquisitor i suspect they’d be a lot less happy, because very likely one of them would be dead.)

J5: what brings them the most joy in the world?for taryn? sitting at arlathven, around the fire, singing with a group of his friends and cousins and clanmates in elvish, someone playing the harp and someone else tapping a drum in time, the sweet warmth of dandelion wine on his tongue and the smell of smoke.  for sule…spending hours walking and climbing until she finally pushes open a door and enters a room no one’s touched in a thousand years, that nature has reclaimed, and then sitting down and carefully recording everything she sees in sketches and rubbings and notes. eating your lunch at a table your ancestors used to eat at in the time of arlathan. camping under the stars under an ancient archway. 

N1: what would they never do?taryn would never eat another tomato. they’re weird and gross and he doesn’t like them!! how sule eats cherry tomatoes by the fistful he will never know. sule would never try to make gin again. that went badly. 

i mean, more seriously, they’d never betray each other – they disagree all the time, but their loyalty to each other is strong. 

N2: what have they never done that they want to do?taryn’s never managed to sail on the ocean and he’d really really like to, because mythal came from the sea and it sounds cool and it looks cool and it would mean he doesn’t have to walk around the waking sea again like the last time he went north, but he already hates sailing on rivers and lakes so much he’s not sure he can manage it. he thinks pirates are so awesome.sule has a huge list of things she wants to do and ruins she wants to see. she has a map. it has pins in it. she’s pretty sure she wants to kiss a girl too but she hasn’t done it yet. 

N3: is there anything they absolutely can’t believe people do?taryn cannot believe people eat cherry tomatoes. seriously. what the fuck. (sule pops eighteen of them into her mouth at once. more for her.) he’s also usually pretty surprised when people don’t have any interest in history, especially other elves, especially in their own history. he finds it so important. sule can’t believe people are such dicks. she spends a lot of time either by herself or with her brother, and joining the inquisition is an eternal lesson in learning how not to deal with loosely veiled insults by punching them. (sule was regularly scolded for dealing with her problems by punching or biting as a child.)

N4: what is the most embarrassing thing they have ever done?taryn got very wasted at his second arlathvhen, because he was fifteen and exactly old enough to be like “why yes, i am an adult now and i will have some undiluted wine, thank you kindly,” and he was a genteel enough drunk that nobody quite knew how much he’d had until he got up and loudly announced to the keeper of clan sabrae that he intended to marry her First on the next new moon’s rise, because she was as pretty and round and also kinda blurry as the new moon, and then he promptly passed out in the water trough in the middle of a serenade. merrill thought it was funny, at least.sule has done a lot of vaguely embarrassing things (mostly they involved climbing trees as a kid and then being afraid to come down) but the most embarrassing one to her was the summer that a few hunters from another clan were visiting and her mother so, so clearly was trying to get her to marry one of them, a friend of a friend’s son, a good hunter but not interested in history or her hobbies at all. it ended with her turning the hunter down in front of most of her clan, he was confused and angry, she said some rude things about the shape of his chin before she stormed off, it was very awkward and she still can’t talk to anyone from clan virhnen. taryn still calls the guy ‘chinface.’ 

N5: have they done anything they never thought they’d do?sule did not think she was into girls, or shemlen for that matter, but as soon as she saw josephine montilyet she melted into a puddle on the floor and has not recovered since, so that’s a thing she’s dealing with. she never thought she’d end up living in an elven fortress occupied by a human organization, either, but it’s worth it to investigate skyhold. taryn didn’t think he’d be joining something like the inquisition either – just because he’s diplomatic and approachable doesn’t mean he intended to be part of a human endeavor like this – but he also didn’t assume he’d be meeting the avatar of mythal or drinking from the well of sorrows or quietly swearing by fen’harel’s hairy cock that one time he fell down the library stairs drunk and then finding out who fen’harel is, so it’s been a hell of a few years in the inquisition for poor taryn. 

abc character meme

[armor-goblin]

ABC meme! Randomly picked but super interested: D 1 for Brynn, C 2 for Miri, A and H2 for the twins!!!

D1: how would they decorate a house if they had one under their name?

brynn probably takes a long time to figure out how she’d decorate a place…she grew up austerely with the circles, but she’s also got a bit of an individualistic streak for a templar, and would probably keep a lot of souvenirs from her travels and her friends as she accumulated them. i think if she got a place to herself she would probably very slowly fill it with tapestries and soft blankets and shelves of pretty mementos, pieces of sea glass and fossils and homemade pottery, especially if she and sera stayed together. (in canon, anyway. i think in a modern setting she has a fondness for really weird shaped or handmade mugs, slightly tacky decor, tapestries hung unironically because she finds them pretty and likes sleeping in what looks like a pillow fort…a little bit of a college kid aesthetic a few years later than usual.) (brynn IS probably the kind of person who keeps cool liquor bottles and fills them with glitter or cat food or something.)

C2: in what position do they sleep?

mireille probably sleeps on her side. i imagine after years of austerity and simple beds and chilly nights she takes full advantage of the fancy setup at skyhold and nestles in a huge pile of blankets and furs and pillow because WARM

A2: what activities have they participated in?

taryn and sule are both historians of clan ralaferin – taryn is a linguist who’s spent a lot of time traveling and deciphering old and new forms of elvhen with the many clans, and sule is more of a preservation archaeologist, tracking down and recording old temples and artifacts. they are nerds. taryn’s also the keeper’s second, a mage of middling talent and herbalist of slightly more talent, and sule is a pretty good shot as well as a fairly talented bowyer and leatherworker. both of them can sail a riverboat, although taryn’s not fond of it, and they’ve both been shepherds for the clan’s halla herds before, although sule tends to get distracted and makes a pretty poor shepherd.

H2:do they prefer summer or winter?

sule prefers summer because she likes wearing simple clothing and doesn’t mind sweating; taryn has less strong opinions about it, but he’s more fond of cooler weather. 

abc character meme

[armor-goblin]

3 for the codex prompts!

Lady Montilyet, 

Here is the information from Keeper Elindra on the Sulevin Blade -- Neria asked me to pass it on to you. I have added some notes. My people’s artifacts are my area of interest are my specialty are important, but we do not always agree on which of our tales about them have the most truth even within our clan, let alone outside them.  But that shem witch certainly doesn’t know what she’s talking about. At least you didn’t ask her. 

If your Inquisitor chooses to send anyone to investigate the rumors, I hope you might consider us. And not that witch of the wilds. I could come to your office to talk about it if you like. My brother and I like Skyhold well enough, it’s so cold up here of course you know that you’re from Antiva aren’t you but he is much happier examining maker’s marks on its stonework than I. 

Do you like oatcakes? I could 

that’s a terrible idea why would she like oatcakes nobody likes oatcakes

Andruil please! Teach me how to talk to pretty women!!!

-- a much-crossed-through and viciously crumpled note that managed to miss the fireplace in the quarters of Sule Ralaferin, Dalish archaeologist and liaison to the Inquisition in 9:42 Dragon. 

codex asks! 

[armor-goblin]

7 for Brynn, 3 Miri, 9 for Tabris + ‘how they are improving’ for each of them! Bonus 1 & 2 for the Ralaferins!

SO MANY THANK YOU

brynn: something they do that hurts themselves (7) 

i think brynn is a little bit bad at saying no – she’s kindhearted and she’s also genuinely interested in helping people, and she’s not even good at saying no to herself when she wants something, whether that’s ‘i want to tell this whole story with my voice and not use sign’ or ‘i really want a third cookie.’ it means she tends to push her own problems down under those of others in the name of helping, and it also means that she’s prone to exceeding her own limits. brynn’s not really working on this one, haha, especially as a templar working to help kirkwall and the marches after the revolution and especially once she gets hired by the inquisition. it’s not so much that she’s used to taking orders, because she’s always been the kind to mistrust authority and reinterpret her orders how she likes; she just needs to help for once, and doesn’t say no, even when she should. (that and struggling with her injury. what are limits!)

miri: a trait they express in the wrong way (3)

oh, this is a hard one, because miri has so many great flaws haha. i think her pride in her skill can come off as haughty or overly intellectual sometimes. she deserves to be proud of her accomplishments – she’s very good at what she does, and she’s worked very hard to get that way, and she has a great wealth of relatively useful knowledge – but she also tends to come across as patronizing when she gets going, and sometimes doesn’t quite get why someone else might not get what she’s talking about. come on, you don’t know entremet’s basic theory of sigils? of course you need to add deathroot in droplets, you should know that, shouldn’t you? miri’s secure in her knowledge, and it means she often doesn’t explain her thought process or her ideas fully because she assumes you know. she’s gotten better about that with some groups, and she’s pretty good with kids, but adults or other enchanters – especially nonmage alchemists – often find her hard to talk to. adan hated her because she came in with all these fancy circle ideas and she was kicked out of his cabin at least eight times for trying to correct him.

tabris: a reason they haven’t improved on their traits (9)

minna’s pretty settled in the person she is, but at the end of the day…minna’s tired. she’s gone from a pretty impulsive and angry person at barely 18 to someone both more patient and more bitter at 28, accepting parts of herself and working on others – her impulsiveness she leaves alone, she’s gotten a little better about trust although she’s really only fully there with her dog and zevran, she’s made her anger into a more patient thing than it ever was as a kid. minna’s grown up a lot since the fifth blight, and you can tell. you can tell she’d still climb the alienage walls in a heartbeat if the gates were shut, but she’s also not lingering around denerim anymore because she knows she’d still climb those gates and bring more problems down on her family (in her mind). she’s gotten calmer and quieter, and also a lot more deadly efficient. 

taryn and sule: a trait they have too much of (1) and a trait they have too little of (2)

i think sule has a little too much recklessness and too little patience for anything she doesn’t explicitly want to do; she’s passionate and would much rather focus on the things she likes (history, architecture, dalish stories) than her actual job of being a liaison to the inquisition, and while she can sit and meticulously copy out the inscription on a pillar over the course of six hours, she’s got almost no patience for anything else including social interaction. taryn only gets to hang out with her because he knows how to be quiet sometimes, and even then, sometimes she wants to push him out of a tree. she’s learning to go haring off less, but she’s not pleased about it. 

in contrast, taryn’s got too much...he’s very approachable and he’s exactly patient enough that he’s easy to talk to, and sometimes that ends up with him listening to everyone’s stories and problems and relationship issues. he’s a little bit too shy to speak up. he’s very good at small talk and listening, but his patience sometimes means that he’s stuck as everyone’s shoulder to lean on. he likes being appreciated, so he kind of sticks with it despite the annoyance. if he’s got too little of something, it’s probably ‘ability to stand up for himself,’ although that dramatically changes as he gets more involved with the inquisition. sule’s always stood up for him, after all, and he hasn’t had the same chances to do so for her. 

WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with my character

[armor-goblin]

For OC fact swap: Emma performed exceptionally well throughout her life academically, but never officially attended university. She was tutored by a university professor through her childhood and adolescence, and has attended a number of classes at the university in Starkhaven, as well as assisted in important historical research, but was never officially enrolled due to her status as a commoner.

that’s awesome. i love thinking about the schooling and university in the dragon age world because it clearly exists but not everywhere and not for everyone...i wonder what the base level of education is like. they do have the printing press, after all, which tends to make education and literacy easier. HMM

i’m going to skip miri, who’s very obviously an academic with training, and go straight to taryn ralaferin, who’s a First and a linguist of ancient and modern elven. he’s learned almost everything he knows by talking to various Keepers as well as studying old ruins and basically assembling a lexicon of written and spoken elvhen (since the language seems to be almost entirely oral nowadays and even then, they don’t exclusively speak in it, it seems?) as a passion project aside from the basic training of a First in magic and lore. and oh boy does he like Solas, who has this weird pronunciation he’s never heard before but can tell him some more about the symbology of art and statues. oh boy, does he like incorporating solas’ bits of knowledge and pronunciation into his lexicon. oh boy! he asks about old swearing -- if Solas has dreamt at battlefields, perhaps he’s heard some from the time of arlathan, and could comment on linguistic drift? -- and gives a few examples of current day swearing, most of which have to do with the dread wolf and his various appendages. (one is about andruil’s quiver.) solas does not appreciate that. AT ALL. 

he stops wondering why solas reacted so weirdly to that list of curses during trespasser and also stops swearing by the appendages of his deities altogether. (his sister sule, in contrast, starts swearing by them a lot more often.)