#tevene fashion

[eluviansandevanuris]

Fashion of the Winter Palace: Dorian

When Josephine announces that they are to chose their own clothes for the ball at the Winter Palace Dorian retreats to his library corner to think.

For all his glib jokes, Dorian is intimately aware of how mages from the Imperium are perceived, it doesn’t matter that he’s not actually a magister. For the nobles of Halamshiral that is all they will ever see him as.

He could wear one of the uniforms that Josephine commissioned, but hiding who he is has never been one of Dorians’ strong suits. He will not hide, not here and not in Tevinter. 

He will never ‘play the part’

And so Dorian gets to work, he will treat this as any other soirée in the imperium, he will dazzle and intimidate, enthral and horrify. Orlesian fashion is oddly simpler than Tevene fashion. Yes more styles come and go every year, but it’s not like the secret language of Tevene fashion where every stitch speaks.

When Dorian is announced at the Winter Palace, a momentary hush falls over the ballroom and one Orlesian noble faints, Dorian looks majestic, he looks regal, he looks like a magister of old.

The outfit he wears in many layered and complex, with whisper thin inky black silk as an under-robe , the ends peaking out making it appear as if he’s walking on smoke. The over robes are rich and heavy with golden embroidery, glimmering in the light of the Winter palace.

If one looks closely many of the looping swirls of brocade hide glyphs of protection and resistance to poison. 

The black velvet surcoat is a thing of beauty, wide shouldered and high collared adding to Dorian’s daunting appearance.

The sleeves of the ensemble are eye catching and mesmerizing, the eyes of a dozen peacock feathers wink at the gathered masses.

Dorian leaves no part of himself unadorned, his eyes are lined with shimmering gold and curved around his ear is a golden serpent cuff.

As he walks through the halls of Halamshiral scandalized whispers bouncing off the marble walls, Dorian cannot help the small satisfied smile that curves along his lips.

[pluviatrix]

too late. he's doomed to spend 3 years of his miserable 20s in a castle with a bunch of annoying fantasy catholics

my baby. horrible things will happen to him.

[bharv]

“Magister Pavus.”

“Inquisitor Cadash.”

You look old, she wants to tell him, but she’s sure she looks older. She settles on something else instead.

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

“It’s all the fashion, my dear. Not that you’d know what it’s like to be a la mode.”

“If it’s Orlesian, I don’t want it.”

“Oh, but I’ve missed you.”

He sits with her and takes her hand for just a moment, and she could almost cry at the feeling of the callouses from his staff, still there even though he is softer now. 

“Is Bull joining us?”

“It’s not a good time,” Dorian says quietly. She knows that tremble at the edge of his voice. He is afraid. “Besides. I wanted you all to myself.”

“Well. You’ve got me. Now what?”

Things in Kirkwall were… less than optimal. The guild wanted her to make her play against the acting Viscount, eager as always to spin gold from shit. All she wanted was to bring his body home, back to the city that he loved, that he never wanted to leave. She had promised Bianca she would try.

“I think you should meet her,” Dorian says, and she can feel her jaw tense.

“I don’t have anything to say to her.”

“You know what I’m going to say-”

“Don’t-”

“Varric would want you to.”

She breathes through her nose as the servers bring more wine and pour it. A hearty red, the sort you could only get in this part of the world for the price. Dorian smiles at the boy, a handsome sort, and pushes an extra gold into his hand.

“So this is a trap,” she murmurs as she raises her glass to her lips, and he laughs.

“Maker forbid. It’s an… invitation, is all.”

“She’s already coming, isn’t she?”

“Well. She’s Tevene. Likelihood was she was already here. You know how it is.”

She’s heard of this child, this Rook. Barely out in society before Varric swooped in to recruit her, with a letter of recommendation from Maevaris Tilani herself. But it was all nepotism, of course it was. That was how the Kalna dwarves worked. Thorold had been instrumental in placing the girl with a surface family when Bartrand was lost to the madness, and the resemblance to her uncle was clear as a blue sky.

“I know exactly how it is.”

“Come now. The girl is all of eighteen. She’s lost. Well. We’ve all suffered a great loss. She could use…”

“What? An inspiration? A mentor? A hug?”

“Even you were a child once.”

Not aged eighteen, she wants to say, but she says nothing. She knows it is not this poor girl’s fault that she was saved from being sold to the carta, or worse. It was all luck, all one good or bad decision.

Or somebody advocating for you.

“Fine,” she says, draining the last of her glass. “I’ll speak to her. I’ll listen. I’ll be the sage elder dwarf, the blasted ancestor. But if you think-”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I have a room upstairs, and I thought we could relax.”

She laughs. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Kaffas. I mean that we can have a little more to drink. Perhaps smoke. There’s no great rush.”

“Just the end of the world.”

She looks at him again. He’s always had that edge of earnestness behind the bluster, and after all these years she can still read him like a youth.

“So the plan is to get me lightly toasted so I won’t be so…” she struggles to find the world, but she raises her hand before he can protest. “Who put you up to it? Did Thom write to you?”

“Josephine,” he confesses sheepishly, and she can’t help but laugh. He joins in, and for a moment she is ten years younger, and it all seems so different and yet in so many ways the same.

“Well, I trust she knows how to avoid incident. Far be it for me to disobey the boss.”

“It is, as they say, the good stuff. I’ve been assured.”

“I didn’t take you for a smoker, Dorian.”

“I can’t say it’s a regular pastime. You’ll have to look after me.”

“If you get paranoid, I’m calling in reinforcements.”

“Just make sure they’re handsome.”

“Deal.”

[rookinthecrownest]

Pompeiia Agrippina Oranius | 31 | Mage - Evoker

Illario apologist & lover

WIP of a little reference sheet for my favourite nepo baby. She’s obsessed w/ herself, Illario’s obsessed w/ her and I’m obsessed with both of them.

I am not good at designing clothes or weapons so making up an outfit for a Tevene socialite who would be rocking the most expensive drip and latest fashion was a … a challenge .. (I wanted to rip my hair out while i was drawing this)

anyway .. yeah.. this is her.. miss you cant slay ⚔️ if you don’t slay 💅 ✨

Her outfit doesnt need to be practical bc Illario will be doing all the close up fighting and taking all the damage!! 🤩

[my-dear-anonym]

My-Dear-References: Dragon Age Resources

Spread the Wealth!

If you have any references you would like to see compiled here, let me know and I'll look into it.

Characters: Dialogue, Traits, References, and More

Character Conversations:

DAO: Companion on Companion Dialogue DA2: Companion on Companion Dialogue || PC on Companion Dialogue DAI: Companion on Companion Dialogue || PC on Companion Dialogue (Big Shout Out to @daitranscripts Veilguard: Companion on Companion || PC on Companion Solas' Voice and Dialogues

Character Ages:

A List for Companions

Character Heights:

Coming...Eventually

Stuff I've Gathered on...

Lucanis:

Armor Facts, History, Relationships, General, and Crow Related

Harding:

Family, History, General, Dwarf Magic, etc

Veilguard End Romance Flower Images

The Nations of Thedas:

Foods for Different Nations Names for different Cultures (shoutout to @schizcolephrenic) Cultural Views and Interactions with Spirits Across Thedas Rivaini and Qunari Fashions and Architectures (Plus a little tevinter)

Languages:

Ancient Tevene Qunlat Orzammar Dwarf Ancient Elvhen: Fan Compliations: 1, 2 || Canon Translations Antivan: I use Spanish, but there's also THIS Swearing in Common

Antivan Crows:

Here is the Wiki Here is everything you get out of Zevran through dialogue part 1 and part 2 (huge shout out to @eveninglakehomeworld)

Date of Events:

The dates of various installments of the series, placing the games and published content on the Dragon Age Calendar.

Wicked Grace:

Wonder how to play the game? Want to know just enough to implement into a fic? Here you go.

Herbalism and Plants

Random tidbits from Veilguard

I'll update this at my own fancy. (I've got all this shit bookmarked and tabbed out so we'll see)

Unsorted references I haven't had time to place yet but want to come back to later:

[aithne]

Old Roads: Inquisition

So that ask from @darkspawntaxcollectors that I answered last night has really gotten me thinking about Old Roads and what I would have written had I decided to extend the series through the Inquisition timeframe. It would absolutely been a book-length fic that I 100% do not have time to write, so!  Here you all go: an outline of what might  have been called Faithless Convocations.

Taking Cullen’s place as Commander of the Inquisition would likely have been Matias, the Templar who was sent to Kirkwall after the breaking of Kinloch Hold’s Harrowing Chamber. He’s a Templar, he’s Fereldan, he has leadership experience, and he has had quite a bit of character development in the form of Shit That Happened in Kirkwall. He’s a darker personality than Cullen, less stodgy and more temperamental, and his personal character arc over Inquisition involves kicking lyrium and also dealing with the issues that taking lyrium was allowing him to cover up and ignore.

Leliana spends less time as Left Hand of the Divine in this version, but she still does become the Hand a couple of years before the Conclave. She brings her partner Amity with her to Haven and then Skyhold. Amity is Tevene and a mage, though she never participated in the power structure of Tevinter since she was part of a now-defunct intelligence organization named the Daughters of Dumat.

I’d skip over the first part of Inquisition except for establishing that the Inquisitor is Reshlyth Lavellan, a Dalish mage who is very not cool with being called the Herald of Andraste. Pretty much everything there proceeds according to the game’s story beats…

…right up until Etain Hawke leads Reshlyth to a cave in Crestwood to meet his Warden friend, who turns out to be none other than Kathil Amell, Etain’s cousin and Hero of Ferelden.  Reshlyth also gets to meet Cullen, Zevran, and the three kids--as well as Anders, who’s Etain’s partner and has been staying with the Amell family while Etain was at Skyhold. Kathil happens to be immune to the false Calling because it doesn’t register over the constant screaming of the shadow of Urthemiel in her head. Anders is immune because of Justice.

Someone eventually asks Leliana about this, and she admits that she was actually in contact with the Hero of Ferelden. When asked why she didn’t originally ask for her help, she says, “Because Kathil Amell’s method of solving a problem is to create ten worse problems to take its place.”

Kathil and Cullen help find out what’s going on with the Wardens, while Zevran, Anders, and the rest find somewhere quiet and out of the way to stay for the moment.  Kathil, in classic Kathil fashion, is very fucking angry with both the Wardens and the people manipulating them. She insists on going to Adamant Fortress with the Inquisition, and Cullen insists on going with her, because he knows damn well what happens when he lets Kathil out of his sight.

Here Lies the Abyss proceeds as usual right up until Adamant proves not structurally up to Clarel’s last spell hitting a damaged walkway and dumps Reshlyth, Cassandra, Varric, Iron Bull, Etain, Kathil, Cullen, and a badly wounded Clarel off of it, prompting Reshlyth to open a rift into the Fade to catch them. (I like Clarel, so she gets to survive.)

As usual, Kathil becomes Urthemiel the moment she hits the Fade. Fortunately, Kathil has been finally working with the Old God’s shadow instead of against her, so while it’s extremely unsettling to have a dragon with them, disaster does not immediately ensue. They patch up Clarel as well as they can (Etain has some healing magic but more importantly he’s gotten some medical training from Anders), figure out something for a litter for her, and head out to find Nightmare.

Everyone has so many questions here, and Cullen is just like “look, if we survive, you can ask, but right now we need to focus.”

Nightmare taunts everyone, but once it realizes that the Thrice-Bound is in its realm and Moros is likely not far behind (and might be able to use her to invade if she feels like), it starts to panic. Justinia shows up, bringing Reshlyth’s memories with her, and the realm itself starts to fight, warping and shifting and screaming at them.  There’s a lot of [cool shit happens here] going on. Possibly a couple of disasters.

Once they find Nightmare and kill its lieutenants, Nightmare focuses on Kathil and Reshlyth, because both of them represent opportunities to get out of the Fade. Kathil is like, “you all go ahead, I’ll catch up” and Cullen panics, because fuck if he’s going to have this happen again. Kathil, with a massive effort, becomes herself for a couple of minutes, they have a quiet conversation, Kathil hands him something, and then Urthemiel folds out around her again and Cullen is like, “Let’s go.”

[cool shit with Kathil happens here. Maybe Moros does show up? Maybe Nightmare and Kathil already know each other?]

Everyone except Kathil tumbles out of the Fade and the rift seals.  They deal with the immediate situation at Adamant (including getting Clarel off to the Inquisition’s healers) and then Cullen grabs Reshlyth and Etain and goes “we’re gonna get Kathil out now. I need some insulated gloves and can you do a small rift, Reshlyth?

Reshlyth opens a little rift and Cullen and Etain call Kathil/Urthemiel to it with whatever it was that Kathil gave Cullen, and Cullen reaches into the Fade and grabs her.  Turns out that Kathil and Cullen were prepared for this.

Everyone heads back to Skyhold. Kathil is in not-great shape and needs some time to recover, so she convalesces at Skyhold and gets to know the members of the Inquisition. Meeting Matias again is…awkward, to say the least, but Kathil and Dorian are immediately sympatico. She twigs to Blackwall not being a Warden, and is very, very uneasy about Solas. Reuniting with Dagna is definitely a good thing, since they hadn’t seen each other since Kathil crashed at Dagna’s place for a few weeks while she was out of her head post-Blight.

Reshlyth more or less turns around and heads out to the Winter Palace, and comes back with (of all people!) Morrigan and her kid in tow. Kathil is like, “You know what? Let’s get Zev and the kids here. Anders, too. Skyhold’s safe enough for a little bit.” Etain agrees to put off heading for Weisshaupt for a couple of months, since it’s the dead of winter and they’re just gonna get stuck in the snow somewhere anyway.

At this point, plot ceases for a bit and we get to just live in Skyhold with these characters for probably 50k words.  Reshlyth recruited the mages, and between them, Dagna, Dorian, Kathil, Etain, Amity, and Morrigan, there is a tremendous amount of magical research going on. Vivienne even gets in on the fun.  Zevran more or less becomes everyone’s therapist. The builders working on Skyhold start making breakthroughs in material science as they rediscover elven building techniques and start applying them with modern methods.

Solas is initially extremely put out and angry around Anders/Justice/Vengeance, but eventually calms down and agrees to help them. Between him and Zevran, Anders and Justice start to actually heal some of the trauma that they’ve been through. Etain keeps putting the trip to Weisshaupt off because he’s actually enjoying himself for once and this is the first time Anders seems to be actually getting better since pre-Chantry explosion.

Clarel recovers, in large part due to Anders basically taking over her care.  She and her magical ability will never be the same, though, and it’s somewhat obvious that even if she wasn’t hearing the false Calling, her true Calling is almost upon her. She and Kathil kind of become friends, and she does become friends with Morrigan.

At some point, someone figures out that the dude who blew up Kirkwall’s Chantry is being harbored in Skyhold, despite them taking care to not actually call him Anders. Reshlyth and Josephine have to do a lot of very fancy footwork to make that chill out enough that they don’t have an Exalted March show up on their doorstep. Reshlyth, personally, has zero problems with Anders except for the fact that for whatever reason, he’s still Andrastian.

Reshlyth and Kathil have a bunch of conversations. They discover they’re distantly related, which is fairly awkward because, well, Kathil is from Fereldan nobility and Reshlyth is Dalish soooooo that was extremely unlikely to have been a consensual relationship.

All of the kids, Cole, and the various Amell family dogs run around in a pack. There are Shenanigans.

Cassandra gets to know Kathil and forgives Leliana for not mentioning that she knew where she was, because the Hero of Ferelden is not nearly as awesome as she had made her out to be in her head. In fact, she’s kinda scary. She likes Cullen and Zev a lot, though, and thinks it’s very romantic that the three of them are together.

Arbor Wilds happens offscreen, kicking off a series of decisions – is the Amell family going to stay for the fight against Corypheus? Are Etain and Anders ever going to leave for Weisshaupt? The major change that everything in the story has been building to is that Morrigan does not seek out Flemeth, instead allying with Kathil to learn the form of a dragon.  Flemeth doesn’t get possession of the Old God soul in the same way (I would need to figure out if she still gets it, or if Branwen (who is Morrigan’s kid’s name in Old Roads) keeps it).

[cool shit happens here]

In the end, to align with the established Old Roads timeline, the Amell family takes off again.  They show up again briefly for Trespasser, mostly because I’m interested in what Teagan and Kathil have to say to one another after all these years.  Kathil doesn’t live long after Trespasser—she dies sometime between 9:48 and 9:51 Dragon—but I am fairly convinced that Cullen and Zevran help with the search for Solas, and her daughter Cerys is helping run some kind of rebellion by the time she’s in her early 20s.

I actually wish I had the time and energy to write this.  This is about a 200k word commitment, sooooo it is unlikely to happen.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

My issue with this is that the words “trans” and non-binary are the real world consequence and rebuttal to the phenomenon of sex and sexuality being fashioned under a formal umbrella of scientific study, which is why these words are academic and have latin roots to begin with. The relationship between sexuality and human psychology is infrangible. You cannot simply plop these words into this universe like “oh Tevinter has Latin, therefore we use Latin”. I consider that extreme laziness. Many languages in many different cultures have had terms and turns of phrase (of varying levels of derision or pejorative, I’ll grant) to describe gender nonconformity that were not scientific because again, these studies of human sexuality as it relates to quantifiable, measurable human behavior were not widely established, and even that which existed took a long time to percolate to the collective consciousness.

To just go with the words “trans” or “non-binary” shows a distinct lack of imagination and the writers’ disinterest with writing from the actual perspective of a Medieval-Renaissance fantasy world. Absolutely no creativity, no desire to genuinely put themselves in the shoes of a person who does not live in a world where the collected knowledge of sexuality and human behaviors evolved from philosophical and comparative cultural ponderings to rigorous areas of scientific study.

They used the word aqun-athlok for Krem in DAI. They quite LITERALLY could have come up with a series of made-up syllables that meant non-binary or trans in whatever language they wanted since, you know, this isn’t the real world and the whole point of a fictional world is that you can do whatever. Tevene is Greek and Latin inspired. Inspiration should be used purely for vibes, not 1:1 recreation, not copy-paste.

They had a golden opportunity to expand their world’s language lexicon, to channel their inner Tolkien, to explore the power of crafting a personal term for yourself with the limited language and experience you possess (a la Korzybski) , and instead just went “nah, just use the modern IRL words :) “ as if we don’t already have examples of what Tevene looks like (hint: it’s not exact Latin/Greek)

But that’s just me.

Maevaris Tilani: Inventor of Transgenderism

So, I'm one of the people who was initially put out by the use of the words "trans" and "nonbinary" in Veilguard. NOT the concepts, mind you - we've had those for a while. Just the words.

Then I had some thoughts about Maevaris Tilani. Let me take you on a journey.

First: I played a Shadow Dragon who, like myself, is a trans man. When I got the Varric's shaving mirror scene, he referred to himself specifically as trans. I thought that was kind of funky, since Krem hadn't had the word for it back in the day.

Then Taash starts going on their gender journey, and two things happen:

Neve directs them specifically to the Shadow Dragons for gender discussion.

This line from A Little Dragon Hatches: "The Shadow Dragons have some fancy terms. But using 'they' and knowing that? It feels good."

The Shadow Dragons have some fancy terms, huh? Sounds like they might be involved in setting up that language.

The Shadow Dragons who are run by Maevaris Tilani, transgender icon.

Mae has been a prominent trans woman in Tevinter for a while, and so I would completely believe that she would want language for the trans people that came after her.

Plus, Tevinter language is greek- and latin- based, so it's not unreasonable for her to derive those words.

So, my theory: In the 10 years since Inquisition, Maevaris Tilani has pioneered language around trans people, and that's why the Shadow Dragons all know trans and nonbinary.

Thank you for your time.

[sleepymarmot]

I'm glad it was so easy to make my Rook look Extremely Tevene.

Just two very fashionable activists from Minrathous visiting their city and bonding over their feelings about it, and maybe flirting a little.

[gxldencity]

Dlgkkvnmfmgfmfn Dolores and Dante's rs in dragon age would be a lot sadder in forgotten realms/bg3. In Forgotten Realms/BG3, she left before fully knowing who he is as a person and not as a child she was forced to care for. His image of him as a 12 year old is perpetually stuck in her head bc that's how old he was when she last saw him. So when Dolores met him again at 17, she has to grapple with how she wasnt there for a huge part of his formative years and if she wants to have a rs with him, she has to stop seeing and treating him like a child and that he is a fully realized person.

Dolores also feels a connection towards him because they are the last two surviving members of their family. She would've had the same feelings if say Dulcinea or Dora survived

In Thedas/Dragon Age though, Dante is the only family Dolores has since she was about 10 and in the Circle. They survived the Circles's disbandedment and the Mage Templar war together. They survived the trip to Tevinter to get Dante some sort of teacher for his dreamer powers and blending in Tevene society as elf-blooded mages from Orlesian Chantry controlled Circles. She has seen him grow up and IS the only one who could understand everything that she has been through and yet, she still sees him as a child who can't make his own decisions.

And Dante hates her for it. If he could he would leave her but he can't because who else could he turn to? Tevinter is still foreign to him despite living there for several years. He can't turn to his teacher because if she finds out that he's not just keeping his hair long for fashion but to hide the small little points in his ears then she'll throw him out or worse. So he Has to stay with Dolores.

At the same time, Dolores isn't fond of being basically his mother instead of his sister. She's only in Tevinter for him. She'd love to go back to Antiva but she can't because there's no where else in Thedas where she could find someone to train him.

So basically they spent years just...having this unspoken and unsettling feeling lmao

[fandomsinabookshelf]

Geluksarmbandje Be Happy

Geluksarmbandje Be Happy Geluksarmbandje Be Happy Deze geluks armband bestaat uit vier fijne rode koorden met goudkleurige kraaltjes & drie geluks bedels: een klavertje vier bedel, een schattige hartje en een ankertje(het teken voor hoop). Het armbandje heeft een karabijnsluiting met tevens een bedeltje met de tekst " Be Happy " en is in maat verstelbaar. Deze armband is mooi om los te dragen maar ook heel leuk te combineren met andere armbanden om je armcandy compleet te maken. Bekijk hiervoor onze armbanden collectie en creëer je eigen stijl ! Mix & match met meerdere armbandjes voor een fashionable arm party! Lengte armband : 18 cm + 3 cm Kleur : rood; goud

[jukkariart]

I don't think about Alectris as my Rook, but more as an additional companion, but she counts because I love her and she occupies about 97% of my brain these days.

Coming from a Laetan family, Alectris wears clothing mostly appropriate for a Tevene mage, however she values practicality above the latest fashion. She picks simple and comfortable designs, something that will not restrict her movements, however she can afford said clothing to be both from high quality materials and in vivid colors fitting for someone of her background.

She prefers to keep her body covered with long sleeves and high-collar shirts and long trousers, usually having a layer or two on top depending on the weather.

In a pinch she can fix her clothes, a skill she picked up in army, but one can tell it's not something she either enjoys or is very good at. She's also not exactly patient enough for commissioned clothing, so usually you can find her buying clothes from stands and having them readjusted if needed. She would probably not be opposed to stealing clothes from dead people, if only they weren't half-burned most of the time. The price she pays for wielding flames as her magic of choice.

For bonus round: I have no clue about wrestling but that flying elbow thing looks like something she could pull off.

It's Monday morning (boooo)

It's time to tell me about your Rooks! (yay!)

So, what do they like to wear? Is there a particular region's style they wear most often? Do they choose their clothes based on fashion or practicality? Both? Do they make or fix their own clothes, or do they buy/commission them (or steal them from dead people lol)?

Answer as much or little as you like!

Bonus round: because it's wrestling night, @uchidachi wants to know what your Rook's finishing move is!

[felassan]

don’t know what it is or how to describe it in words but aspects of Sera’s concept art outfit designs remind me of if like a Greco-Roman-style soldier entered the Thief franchise, and I think that’s very metal of her

[seahaloed]

As Viscount of Kirkwall, Shepard’s wardrobe moves away from her Champion armor and typical ferelden style clothing. She begins to incorporate bits of Imperium fashion into her court/finery wear when the truth about who her father is comes to light.

She enjoys the dramatics of the fashion, but she doesn’t have the stamina to keep up with it in terms of making her hair/makeup equally as presentable

[cool-kink-sis]

Ancient Elves

I have only played DA:I but I'm scouring wiki as we speak but does anyone know or headcanon anything about the ancient elves? Like fashion? What are the dresses like for balls? Were they barefoot? Were the slaves? Mythal/Flemeth isn't and Abelas weren't, Solas isn't when he comes out as Fen'Harel but maybe M/F isn't because she's in a human body and the sentinals and Solas wear shoes because they're preparing/are in a fight.

What architecture is like? The Qunari, Tevene, Orlais all take after some countries and their languages and architecture in real life, do ancient elves??

Trying to find info for a fic I'm writing and I'm getting overwhelmed.

Does Solas ever reveal much? Is there more info in the others games or the books?

[invinciblerodent]

I originally went off only in the tags about how this makes the both her and Davrin welcomed outsiders exploring each other's worlds, but on a second thought, that's really what tickles my brain about this the most, I think.

Like the game gives a bit of insight into the Dalish and gives an opportunity for a human Rook to gain a bit of a deeper understanding through their Dalish allies, and maybe I enjoy toying with the reverse, and the cultural implications of the seedier urban Tevinter environments being overall far more welcoming to the Dalish than most others. Maybe I like the idea that regular, garden-variety crooks are no more strange to Davrin than your average Warden recruit, and the old red bricks lining the streets beneath the now-available magic signs is maybe even a charming meeting of the old and new that feels strangely familiar to him, too.

Or maybe I just like the thought of the Confident Heroic Cool Warden being knocked profoundly out of his element as he's pulled onto a crowded dancefloor by this whirlwind woman, or when a little old (very obviously queer, dwarven) man who greeted his girlfriend like a granddaughter grabs him by the shoulders, sloppily kisses him on both cheeks, and then makes an ever so slightly inappropriate remark in broken Common/Dwarven/Tevene about his biceps, and a pleasant, but surprisingly racist one about how, for a cat, Ver seems to be a bit of a greyhound*.

(*an old-fashioned and now-pejorative Tevene slang term I just made up for someone who sleeps with mostly elves, because they "chase rabbits")

Before release, I always kind of thought of Ver's usual haunts in Minrathous being part of an industrial-ish area (factories, docks, the surrounding blue collar residentials, etc.), but I've been thinking, and with Dock Town being what it is in-game (and with what it is to Neve), I think I prefer her being more tied to one of the (no doubt many) entertainment- and nightlife districts of the city.

I'm thinking of one of those moderately seedy parts of town that have pubs/taverns/hookah lounges/drag bars/"specialty shops"/etc. and little mom-and-pop eateries that are definitely not fronts for something all lining the streets on the bottom floors of workers' apartment complexes, and at least three larger nightlife establishments (like a casino [gambling den], a circus [it's a cointoss whether you'll see the best burlesque act or a cagefight], and something they only affectionately call a "dancehall") are all sharing view of the same street.

As of right now, I'm tentatively calling it Redbrick Ridge in my mind, because Minrathous seems to use primarily light-colored stones and red and teal magelights (and I think poorer, mainly Soporati-owned places using red accent-bricks to imitate the red of magic would be a cool touch), but I also like the idea that colloquially, it'd more be known as the Catsbane Quarter, or just Catsbane (after the codex entry for the Sun-Blonde Vint in DAI)- in part because of the way a certain Tevene alcohol is typically served, and in part because, like Dock Town, it's also home to a large colony of feral/stray cats.

(Maybe one of the ways you could easily spot an outsider is that they'd be the ones who say that something is "on the Ridge" or "in Redbrick", but the people who actually live there would say that they're from Catsbane, or refer to the people there as "cats". Like, "where in the city are you from?" "oh, I'm a cat.")

(Lots of fun cat-wordplay for a more "low-class" area, too... "A cat may look at a king" being a bit of a slogan for non-mage and slave rights, or an expression of commiserating over injustice? "All cats are grey in the dark", both as a "we're all equal here", and as a way to say "no officer, I didn't see anything"? Someone suspected to be an informant is someone who "wears a bell"? So many opportunities, and they all work really nicely for a place with pronounced Shadow Dragon presence!)

Since Ver was a (military-trained) Soporati guard/rent-a-cop before joining up with Varric, I originally figured that having her mainly guard (and spy on-) slave-keeping construction sites was a fitting thing, but I think now, knowing both her character and the game as I do, I prefer her as a security guard during the week, and a bouncer during the weekends.

Like I like her not as a go-to problem-solver like Neve, but more like... some sort of a neighborhood Red Jenny, someone who somehow (at least tangentially) knows everyone in her bubble.

And like... she lives in one of the dingy little apartments above a moderately run-down lunch-place (at first I thought it would be run by her uncle, now I'm more picturing an older person who emphatically calls her things like "columba mea" and acts like a doting grandmother, but isn't actually related to her). Her friends are all line cooks, busboys, dancers, dishwashers and all kinds of entertainers, as well as bar owners, bartenders and barflies, not a small percentage of them Liberati- which, with her reputation as a useful person to know and the open secret of her being a Shadow, would be something that probably would have drawn someone like Varric to her very easily. (I mean, he primarily seems to network by just... going to bars and asking the drunkest people still capable of speech about who's worth knowing, lol.)

Plus, I also really like the idea that if the owners/workers at a place know that someone is about to cause trouble, they'd see if she's around, ask her to step in for the night, and maybe crack some heads together.

Like imagine being a big, hotshot wannabe-Venatori swinging their metaphorical dick around over a game of Archon, and in comes this quite pretty, but overall unremarkable woman who is kissing 5'7" from the bottom and is not particularly intimidating, but she still lays you the absolute fuck out to dry without breaking a sweat. Probably one of the top ten most embarrassing ways for that night to end, lol.

[eluviansandevanuris]

Tevene Fashion

In the Art of Dragon Age Inquisition Tevene fashion and style is described as “dire opulence”

It’s style at a knife’s edge, with a hint of violence and power behind it. It’s not just dire opulence, but decaying opulence. The Alti clinging onto the corpse of and empire and keeping power through blood and magic.

In Tevinter power is worn like a second skin, statue, wealth and magical abilities are reflected in the clothing of the wearer. 

In Orlais the clothing is style over substance, but in Tevinter it is all substance. Each item of clothing is chosen with calculation among the Alti. In Tevinter the clothing speaks.

Tevene fashion is high necklines and sharp lines, it’s heavy material which richness speaks to the wealth of the wearer, it’s intricate designs.

In Tevinter fashion is not just clothing, it’s a language unto itself.

Dareth Shiral