#the denerim alienage

[heniareth]

Genres of popular Alienage songs, some specific to Denerim (many of these and especially the last one are courtesy of @bumblewarden ):

We Have To Work Tomorrow, Let's Get Drunk

We Have Finished Working For The Day, Let's Get Drunk

That Bastard Drank Away All The Money, Hope It's Nice To Sleep On The Street You Utter Moron

Love I Am Sorry For Drinking Away All The Money - The Hell You Are! Now Go Away (a soprano-barritone speak and answer duet)

Damn I Hope Work Finishes Soon

I Want To Kill My Boss (with metaphors)

I Want To Kill The Tax Collactor (with metaphors)

I Want To Kill The Local Lord (so many metaphors)

Ailill Got Into A Fight And Escaped The Guard

Ailill Got Into A Fight And Got Hanged For It

Little Lilan Killed A Rat

I Am A Woman And Violence Has Been Done Unto Me

I Am A Woman And Violence Has Been Done Unto Me, So I Am Poisoning Them

My Child Is Leaving For Their Wedding

I Am Leaving For My Wedding And I Can't Wait To Get Out Of Here

I Am Leaving For My Wedding And I Really Really Don't Want To Leave

Aw Fuck I Don't Like My Spouse

Holy Shit I Really Like My Spouse!?

Holy Shit I Really Like My Neighbor's Spouse (with metaphors)

Hey I Saw You Kissing Your Neighbor's Spouse (no metaphors)

Beware The Sea It's Full Of Monsters (in which the monsters are metaphors for slavers)

Garahel Killed The Archdemon

Garahel Killed The Archdemon And Still They Treat Us Like Shit

Hey Loghain We Fought With You Where's Our Reward (with some metaphors)

The Exploits Of The Hero Of Ferelden (with metaphors)

Alidda Killed The Chevaliers (so many metaphors)

The Exploits Of The Dark Wolf (ALL OF THE METAPHORS WHAT ARE YOU A SNITCH!?)

[shewolfofvilnius]

so a couple weeks ago I decided that my Rook in Veilguard was going to be a little girl who grew up in the Denerim Alienage and remembered Tabris from when she was a little kid and looked up to her. And I decided to replay the female City Elf origin since it'd been six years Y'ALL THERE ARE A LITTLE BOY AND GIRL PLAYING IN AN ALLEY. AND YOU CAN INTERRUPT THEIR GAME AND TELL THEM A STORY OF A HEROIC ELF AND IF THE KIDS BUY IT THEY GET SO EXCITED AT A STORY OF A HEROIC ELF.

Y'ALL this little girl is absolutely, positively, my Rook.

YOU CAN ALSO TELL HER (and the boy with her) THAT A ROGUE HERO TOOK FROM THE RICH (ie nobles and leaders) TO HELP THE POOR, AND THAT WHEN THE TIME CAME, SHE TURNED HERSELF IN IN ORDER TO HELP PEOPLE AGAIN.

That is QUITE LITERALLY Warden Rook's backstory minus darkspawn. Rook helped people, nobles and Warden brass got really REALLY mad about it, Rook stood in account but also stood proud and defiant.

I swear to the Maker I didn't KNOW about the kids when I planned this out but WOW WOW WOW.

[abyssal-ilk]

okay but a denerim city elf inquisitor romancing sera has so much potential. do you see it. do you see the vision. bioware why did you lock me into being a dalish elf, let me return to being a city elf pls

[dragonageconfessions]

CONFESSION:

I know it's insignificant and unlikely, but I've been wanting to go to Tevinter since my family was sold into slavery in DAO and, like.... I just want to know if Valora is okay? If Bioware could put her name above an NPC's head or something, I'd be happy. My poor Tabris never got to rescue her, and I need closure.

[redlyriumidol]

Sera and character development

So Sera is a character who (imo) gets somewhat the short end of the stick in terms of character development. She's a very polarising character and many people can't stand her- personally I love her now but I wasn't keen on her at all when the game came out. She's brash, rude, has very strong opinions and freely expresses them to the Inquisitor and to others. Sera is also very young, the youngest out of the companions, and I think her immaturity is obvious. She's got internalised racism up to her eyeballs and this makes it particularly unpleasant to romance her as a female elf, which I think was a disappointment to many.

I don't think this initial characterisation is a problem, the problem is that unlike some of the other characters we never really see her tackle her issues over the course of the game. It's easy to blame her for her opinions about elves, but realistically, this hatred includes herself, and therefore it must actually be very painful for her. it's also somewhat antithetical to her goals as a character as someone who stands for the little people- anyone can see that in Thedas, these are disproportionately elves, so caring about elves would actually be logical in her position. Sera's alienation from her identity as an elf is severe, and while I actually do think her feelings are worthy of sympathy (again, this is internalised racism, not a human character who is bigoted towards elves) they're not healthy, they actively obstruct her self-realisation. it's herself that Sera blames for the situation with the baker, it's herself that she hates, her own identity. she's from the alienage but hates people from the alienage. that's really sad, honestly.

In the breakup dialogue with her she says (about herself) "You'd get it if you were smarter. If you understood what it meant to be elven." That's pretty telling of her insecurities and self-hatred, in my opinion.

I think it was a massive wasted opportunity in terms of writing and character development not to give her a questline that interrogates this issue and helps her move past it. The temple of mythal is very personally, viscerally upsetting to her. Despite her repeated denial of it, she does feel connected in some ways to her heritage and I think it's obvious that it's painful for her. So why is it never explored??

In Trespasser, two years on, we do see a Sera who is beginning to grow up. She's very likable in Trespasser imo, her diary gives her a lot of depth. She cares about absolutely everyone. If the Inquisitor is an elf, this is added: "Is s/he all right with the elfy stuff?" and she even shows empathy for the dalish at one point: "Not as bad for dwarves as was for Dalish. Maybe." That's coming from someone who once reacted with disdain towards an elf inquisitor. She's still sceptical, but is slowly becoming less extreme. I'd just have liked for us to see it more explicitly in the actual game.

[lelianaslefthand]

like what is wrong with them

morristen confirmed

[msommers]

did you mean: blorbo with eternal anger issues

[templates: 1, 2]

[louminiferous]

So I was reading up on what happened to the Denerim Alienage after the epilogue and my eyes were not pleased with what they read.

[shungieshrieks]

Finally got around to making an outfit sheet of my Hero of Ferelden, Warden Linus Tabris! Plus the party that carried him through the game (including love interest Leliana <3)

Bonus: Linus looking good over the years

[rodimissliveblogs]

Literally gasped and covered my mouth with my hand as I read this codex. That's Cata's family.... her Denerim alienage family... that's her people! They're still out there! Some of them are still alive!

[bbbigforehead]

i REALLY hope city elf is an option again, i like the dalish but considering in dai we only had dalish as an option and i'm assuming based on their vallaslin both bellara and davrin are dalish, so it'd just be nice to have the option as city elf to contrast that

[heniareth]

oo ok for astala romanticism asks 13 (Is your character bilingual or multilingual? Which language are they most comfortable in or prefer using? How did they come to learn them?) and/or 14 (Do they have an accent? How do they or others think of it?)

am i just using this as a chance to feel out your own headcanons on language in thedas? maaybe

Language!!! Yes we can do language!!! My only regret in this will be that I don't have nearly the evolved headcanons you have for the languages in Thedas. But I do have something, so let's talk about that!! Long post, and therefore under the cut.

13. Is your character bilingual or multilingual? Which language are they most comfortable in or prefer using? How did they come to learn them?

I don't have a proper city elf language bc I find myself with neither the time nor a sufficiently strong urge to create one. In my story, I'm veering more into dialect territory: slang, pronunciation and expressions. That said, there are some things I do think city elves would be notorious for, linguistically speaking. This is to say: Astala starts out speaking only whatever they speak in Ferelden (which is sad), although she does do her best to learn Antivan later on.

First, compound nouns. Elvhen has this amazing feature where you can stitch together words to make new words. Like telanadas, "nothing is inevitable". It's one word. I love those! The closest feature in a language I know irl is German with its Frankenwörter. I think city elves should be allowed to make their own Frankenwörter. As a treat. A dockcabletier is somebody who ties the ripes that hold the ships at the harbor. Rathunters. Businessfuckers aka tax collectors. Notforgetknots are knots you tie into something you have on your person so they remind you of something. Idk, I think it could be a lot of fun and would be a holdover from times when they had their own language that was much more malleable than poor old English.

Next, I think they'd be fantastic sweares when they're comfortable. Look at Sera. Sure, she didn't spend all her childhood in the Alienage, but she's very liberal and very colorful when it comes to swearing. Elvhen has always seemed very poetic to me (with expressions like "The Dread Wolf guides you" for someone who is wrong, for example). I think the city elves would apply similes, metaphors and other stylistic devices very liberally in their day to day life, to amazing effects. I really do Astala a disservice on this end because I do not swear creatively. I like to think I can maybe do her right in normal conversation however.

And, third, and this is not something from elvhen, but something that both Sera and Zevran do which I would like to apply to elvhen: question particles. I think elvhen should have question particles. Zevran is always ending his questions with "yes?" or "no?", Sera with "innit?" and I think it would be really neat and very in-character for Elvhen, which already sticks words together like they are wooden ice cream sticks repurposed for model building, to have something that indicates uncertainty glued to the end of a phrase and thus turning it into a question.

Fourth, slang. If you live among a lot of people and you don't want one half of the population to understand what's going on in your conversation but don't irritate them by speaking another language, I think slang is the way to go. I like to think that they call shem dogs sometimes. Lapdogs are rich human women, wardogs any human with martial training, etc. A bruise is a violet, it there's blood involved it's a rose, things like that. "The guy hands out violets like they're pennies" sounds much less innocuous than saying "careful, this guy likes to punch and will bruise you."

As for Astala learning Antivan, it's hard for her. Languages aren't her thing. She gets the vocab alright, but her grammar and pronuncuation are very distinctly Fereldan. She is generally much more comfortable when using the King's Tongue, but certain phrases she does prefer in Antivan. Many of them only come out when she and Zevran are alone.

14. Do they have an accent? How do they or others think of it?

In relation to the above: does Astala have an accent? Yeah she does! I do keep her dialogue somewhat USAmerican (I think) because the voice acting in the first game was pretty USAmerican and I like it. She and Sera, however, have many similarities in their way of speaking in my mind. Sera sounds pretty British-from-a-very-specific-area from what I've been able to identify, but they share other things.

Astala also does a lot of code switching. She'll be much less informal in her speech if she's not among her own: swear less, use less contractions and slang, put words into a different order, etc. The companions will get to hear the more informal side of her eventually. Still, when she speaks rapid-fire Denerim Alienage slang with Shianni, they too get lost. Alistair might find it funny, Ilanlas would be very confused and a bit exasperated because he doesn't understand them. Other than that, I don't think they'd mind much.

The code switching does come in handy once she's made a name for herself as The Warden(TM). She separates both ways of speaking so much that even on the battlefield her speech will be different depending on who she's leading, her companions or soldiers. The difference will be less noticeable than in everyday life, but it'll definitely be there. If she spoke before the Landsmeet the way she speaks at home, nobody would take her seriously, and she is very much aware of that (and she hates it. She's very protective of her accent: it's her's and that of the people she loves most, after all).

And this is what I have on languages and accents as of now, my friend. I do hope it was interesting, even if it's not broad or very developed headcanons, but rather details. O love languages and I wish we got more of them in Dragon Age and that I could make my own stuff, but for now the switch in register keeps me occupied nicely. Thanks for sending the ask!!! Have a lovely day!!! XD XD XD

[shewolfofvilnius]

I was able to faithfully create an authentic looking 30 year old woman in Dragon Age Veilguard that looks EXACTLY like the grown up version of an ~8ish year old little girl in Dragon Age Origins.

When I say Veilguard's character creator is goated, I MEAN IT.

[abyssal-ilk]

warden tabris falling in love with king alistair? tired, done, old news. warden tabris falling in love with queen anora? THATS new. surely that can't go wrong.

[rangerdoubt]

ok i wrote this surana to romance morrigan but he has time for a stupid little crush on duncan right

[thedragonagelesbian]

the orlesian grey wardens rolling up into denerim only to find that both the fereldan grey wardens survived killing the archdemon somehow and now one of them is king and the other is his 'court enchanter' which as far as anyone can tell just means sitting in his lap all day giggling: ...you know what maybe we'll bring in someone else to lead the rebuilding effort