#the prayer of the age

[biggay-hatemachine]

This post is soooo real and the decent dlc was a mistake on biowares part because what do you MEAN the dwarves use the fossilized blood of their creator-gods to write their histories with and. What do you MEAN there's a lost culture/religious sect of dwarves in the deep roads so old and isolated that they don't even speak the same language, and have dedicated their lives to the protection of said creator-gods.

And they just never bring this shit up again.

[attractthecrows]

let it also be said that I love the Mahariel + Lavellan worldstate. It's so haunted. You are Dalish, you are not a part of human culture, but by happenstance you're dragged into it and to the forefront of hell to save a world that hates and fears your people. You have no choice. You can never return to your home, to the familiar, to anything you've ever known. You will be an echo; Mahariel echoing Garahel, Lavellan echoing Mahariel. You're so proud of your Dalish heritage, but your identity doesn't matter at all. Doomed to be a martyr for a people that do not respect you and cannot understand you, while your clan mourns, lamenting that they cannot bury you, no life-tree to stand as your memory. You're a hero. You're already dead. You died the moment you left your clan.

[geezmarty]

with twitter’s situation being what it is I’m a bit uncertain about what the future holds for my account there (which had about 28k followers that I painstakingly gathered over the course of many many years. that’s a lot of audience to potentially lose for someone who relies entirely on their socials for their job).

so here’s a bit of self promo 😭 I’m Marty, an italian lesbian living in the UK. You might’ve seen some of my stuff around. I make gay comics, TTRPG illos, and more often than not I’m available for commissions (not now but soon enough I’ll have to reopen again 💝)

I’ve been too busy with work but I want to go back to posting more when I can!! If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I make, it would mean the world to me if you could boost this.

Thank you so much for your support over the years and let’s keep going!! 💜

[kikicolors]

Somewhere

[circtheeunbroken]

he's beauty he's grace (he's plotting tax evasion, according to my best friend)

[illustratus]

Denise Poncher before a Vision of Death — Master of the Chronique Scandaleuse

[hejee]

i really want them to meet and team up again after the events of The Missing

[stankhole]

i just know rook has walked into the kitchen late one night and seen this man making a tiramisu beause he refuses to sleep

[dystopyx-blog]

Vampire sugar daddy

Silver Fox. He’s a vampire and he’s like 150 years old at least, maybe older, he won’t tell you his actual age, he’s very cheeky about it. But he isn’t like young man vampire, he’s a silver fox, with greying hair and sturdy build. Was lonely and drunk one night, the lowest he had ever felt, when he went searching for a sugar baby and found you. He was sober by the time you two went on your first date, and he wanted to call everything off, but you needed the money. It was your first time, too. And you were already nervous, but you’d feel worse if you took the sad old man’s money without even talking to him for the agreed upon time. So he had his first “date” with you, and found himself enjoying your company. A lot. So he continued to book time with you. Over the course of several ‘dates,’ he found himself falling for you. He cares about you. A lot. So much so that he couldn’t help asking about, y’know… the whole sugar baby business. He worries about you, what kind of people you’re associating with. To his surprise, you tell him that you actually never took another client besides him, and you mostly worked “normal” socially acceptable jobs, only ever accepting offers from him. But it takes him a year to work up the courage to ask you out for real, no payment necessary. And you agree. Of course, by that time you knew he was a vampire. But what ate at you was that he never talked about turning you to a vampire, and anytime the topic of changing comes up, he dodges the topic. He eventually reveals to you that he wants to wait before turning you. He had been alone for centuries before you, he didn’t want to curse you with the same soul crushing loneliness he faced if you two were to split. If he were to truly be with you forever, he wants to make sure that you are ready for it, too. And, admittedly… he wants to wait until you were older. You were at least 21 when the two of you met, but he passes for middle aged. He selfishly doesn’t want to be older man with younger partner forever�� You two can have sex before marriage if you want, but no biting!!!

[merciawintersageposting]

caught feelings for an 🥵eldritch terror🥵

[dearansur]

on another saw iii rewatch was kinda fascinated by the props. like they really went off with the 'thoughts and prayers will save peepaw' vibe here

(number 3 is in the second screenshot if it wasn't clear)

[daughter-s-of-cain]

[antivanlights]

Thinking very hard about Lucanis' responses when you pick the nonbinary/trans dialogue option after flirting with him during The Coffee Scene (after Illario skedaddles).

MUCH to think about if we linger on this line. Anyway,

The way he goes "Hmm. Perhaps it's closer than I thought." is such a cheesy flirt. Even the table of NPC's behind them is looking over going "bruh". Love it. 10/10 thank you

Notes: The NPC animations don't seem to always align this way. It just happened by chance, the same way Lucanis' poor coffee mug clipped into his arm. I've played the game entirely twice, so right now I'm just messing around with mods. That is why they have those armors equipped so early on in the story.

Bonus: I'll always giggle at the choco-chico thing.

[maintitle]

I can't stop thinking about the implications of the Black Emporium DLC in Inquisition.

Picture this: Kirkwall is a ruined mess. There's still occasional struggle in the streets on a large scale. Mages and Templars still fight a guerilla war. Law and order is fighting to keep control but it's a long uphill climb. Starkhaven might even be threatening a war with it. The famously veil-thin city now has to face the same horror the rest of Thedas has, the rifts in the veil. Kirkwall is still years away from stability.

Enter the Inquisitor. They've arrived. Maybe they're going to save us, one citizen says? But instead of going to the Viscount's Keep or bolstering a resistance, the Inquisitor looks a citizen in the eye and says; "Damn that sucks. Where is the best entrance to the sewers?"

And then they're never seen in the city again.

[snapdragoned]

There was no hope of me documenting their infancy very well, but the quads age up (chaotically, without birthday cakes), so it's finally time for a proper introduction!

From left to right, top to bottom:

Kiran Clemens

Traits: Light Sleeper, Unstable

Personality: 2/8/9/3/6

Tarik Clemens

Traits: Absent-Minded, Excitable

Personality: 10/8/2/10/5

Farah Clemens

Traits: Absent-Minded, Loves the Heat

Personality: 2/5/6/9/7

Anil Clemens

Traits: Absent-Minded, Loves the Heat

Personality: 2/8/4/6/10

They're such a good mix of their parents! I couldn't have hoped for better with quads. It's hard to tell, but Tarik actually has Sydney's hazel eyes. Otherwise, they all have black hair and brown eyes.

[boom-bada-boom]

in a dream i meet my dead friend

“He has, / I know, gone long and far, / and yet he is the same / for the dead are changeless. / They grow no older. / It is I who have changed, / grown strange to what I was.”

— A Meeting, Wendell Berry

when albion’s need is greatest, kilgharrah tells him. when albion’s need is greatest, freya tells him. when albion’s need is greatest, arthur will rise again.

when he first heard the words, he didn’t really understand them. arthur was dead, but he’d come back eventually— though how long was anyones guess. but for the moment, arthur was dead, the king was dead, and his kingdom deserved to know what happened.

he gives himself a day, the night and the dawn and the midday and the sunset, to remain in front of the lake, blood drying and crusting over on his hands and staining his clothes. he gives himself a day frozen keeling at the lake’s edge, before pushing himself to his feet and whispering, “i promise i’ll come back.” to the still still still waters.

it takes him a long time to fulfill that promise. by then, giaus is dead, percival is dead, leon is dead, and the only reason he ever returns to camelot at all is because of gwen, old now and confined to her bed, and because he needs to see the city, the castle, one last time; carve the picture into his memories. maybe carve a spell into the castle’s stone so it survives a while yet, while he runs away from his past.

he kneels once more before the shores of avalon, and the magic heavy over him like a thick winter coat slides off to reveal beneath it a face and body just the same as the one that had knelt there decades before.

“‘when albion’s need is greatest,’” he echoes across the years, and clutches at his own arms in a farce of a hug. there is a long pause, a long moment where the sun high above is hidden behind thick clouds, a long moment where the gentle breeze stills, a long moment where the sounds of the woodland at his back fades out. it passes.

“i want to see you, arthur.” merlin admits to the still waters. “i do. but i fear what threat we will be facing in the face of it.” he smiles, rueful, grieved, so tired already, at the sparkling reflections bouncing from the mirror-like work of nature and magic before him. “i’m— tired. of fighting. i think i’d just like to be with my friends. all of them.”

it’s not really directed to arthur, anymore, he doesn’t think. it’s more an observation of his own inner psyche, something he doesn’t oft do simply because he fears what he might find in the depths.

he knows he means it though, all of his friends. in his minds eye flashes the image of morgana, young, plagued with nightmares still, but brave and kind and righteous; the look of her smile, soft and loving, as she gazed upon gwen, a bundle of flowers in one hand and the other simply holding holding holding gwen’s own; the slight smirk as she looked down on arthur, play-threats and play-fights and all the camaraderie of siblings with none of the titles; the indulgent, caring look she bestowed upon him, in the long quiet moments where she thought him unaware.

all of them.

when the castle fell, merlin thought that this, maybe, was the moment arthur returned. he had not dared step foot in the city walls since gwen’s death, but he still always kept one ear out for news regarding it. his magic, embedded into the stones, strained and tried to protect the frame and those within it, but it could only do so much from the great chasm of distance between him and camelot. he was kneeling before the lake by the end of the day. he did not get up for a week, and then another, and by the time his body seemed liable to shake apart and was held together only by his own magic, and it was abundantly clear arthur would not be returning— by then, he just slammed his fists into the earth and screamed. screamed for a life and a future robbed from him, from arthur, from all his friends. screamed because while their life was robbed because it ended, his life was robbed because there was no end for him.

after that, time seemed to pass quicker, or maybe merlin cared less. camelot, its king and its knights and all the people it contained, was soon faded into myth and legend, a true story known only in the depths of his own mind, hidden behind the ancient old carved-in image of a castle now only ruins in life. history moved around him, through him, did not care for him.

he tried helping, at first. tried using magic to make things better, mostly by healing people. merlin learned soon enough though, and began to stop trying. after the next uncountable attempt at killing him for witchcraft, he stopped trying to help that way. not long after that, every other way too.

when the twenty-first century rolled around, merlin was tired most of all. tired and sad and worn and hopeless. arthur was not coming back, he realized. not if wars and plagues and massacres and destruction was not enough to raise him.

or maybe it is because these were all things merlin could have helped, could have possibly even prevented entirely if he could’ve brought himself to interfere. when albion’s need is greatest, but obviously there would be no need if merlin could fix the problem with a snap of his fingers.

for the nth time, he considered what that could mean. what could be the cause. what great, impossible threat was out there that even merlin couldn’t defeat, that even he could not prevent?

it had been over a thousand years, and he was tired and old and bitter. angry at his still-unfinished destiny and hateful of this immortal, unending life.

perhaps then that’s why he thinks, something merlin can’t defeat? well, he couldn’t very well defeat himself.

and perhaps that is where it starts.

when albion’s need is greatest, king arthur will rise again.

merlin decides he will bring about albion’s time of great need— anything to bring back arthur from his watery grave.

(he was so tired of living, tired of waiting. he just wanted his friend back, wanted to smile and call the king a prat and be looked at with the same fond admiration he’d always been given though never recognized during the moment.)

…

…

…

(below the waters of avalon, between life and death, king arthur pendragon, the once and future king, awakens from death with a gasp.)

(above those same waters, shadows walk the earth. shadows of albion, and of camelot, knights and magical creatures alike. all of them simply echoes given life by a magic more powerful than anything that has ever been or will ever be.)

the thing is, the lake of avalon had never just been the specific location. it is the veil between worlds, and thus the lake of avalon is everywhere where life and death meet.

so, as the world decends to chaos, and as merlin watches the lake shore like the bird he is named after, king arthur is thrust from the lake of avalon somewhere else entirely, far out of merlin’s reach. behind him, the knights of the round table, along with the queen guinevere and the lady morgana, rise just the same.

because, of course, nothing is ever quite simple.

merlin does not extend himself to learn of the whys and hows of the pockets of resistance against him. he does not want to know, just wants them crushed because then, maybe then, albion’s need will be greatest.

so, when a certain floundering group of someones begin carving a path of resistance towards the shadow castle built only from the image carved into merlin’s own head, he does not take note except to send more power to squash it.

(said group does not know much, truly. they do not know of the world they have found themselves in, though they always find people willing to help them in the unlikeliest of places. they do not know what the name of the great evil they face is, nor why it had come, only that they must stop it.)

(they do not know why the lady of the lake was crying, as she watched them stumble into life once more, nor why she handed them a rose, just a rose, still on the stem, and told them that it would lead them to their destiny.)

(it is not until she has disappeared that arthur thinks to ask, where is merlin?)