da’shiral

Anaïs primarily knows Orlesian. Clan Lavellan saw no particular reason to teach her Common, given the clan is highly multilingual anyway and Common is no more relevant to the Dalish experience than Orlesian.

She fairly quickly gets assigned an Inquisition Minion who is her dedicated translator for everybody who doesn't speak Orlesian.

I had two sisters.

Portia Amelia Hyacinth and Payton Bette Augusta. Each named for some handful of distant relatives—a living grab for attention.

Bette was my older sister. She was sent to the Circle at age nine. Portia and I were seven. We both watched as my father promised her she’d be kept safe, as he walked to the Chantry with her hand in his. I didn’t know to cry, then, when I saw my sister wave goodbye, led away by this stranger in armor. I just waved back.

She was no danger. All she could do was throw a barrier when frightened. When she was due for her Harrowing, they made my sister Tranquil instead.

Portia volunteered for the templar order when she was of age, for reasons I’ll never understand. Her designs on the order may have been honorable. But armies need enemies. Wardens fight the darkspawn. Minrathous fights Par Vollen. The templar order presents civilians as enemy combatants. They have to, to believe their work is justified.

When the templars rebelled, so did Portia. My sister believed the order had been treated unfairly by the Chantry, by the Divine Herself. They had been disgraced. The details of the original Inquisition’s treaty violated. They wanted respect.

My other sister, Bette, left unprotected by those who had left her so vulnerable, was slaughtered along all the rest.

Mages are not our enemies. They are our blood, living and dead. The only shame in that is in how we have treated them. In how we have buried them.

Let the rebel mages rebel. I will bury the Order for what they did to Payton Bette Augusta Trevelyan.

Knox's most reasonable pet peeve is people teasing him over his name. His parents heard the word "knox" once and were like "holy shit that’s a cool sounding word" and that’s how knox got named after a hill. Anybody being weird about it will receive a glare and "it's a strong name" (to the tune of a rehearsed reply) until the interaction is too unbearable to continue.

Of Adaar’s family, little is known. Barring several truly miraculous steps forward in our relationship with the Qunari, it is probable our knowledge of his genealogy will remain stunted. What we do have, however, are records of his parents, Lady and Saar Adaar, who broke from the Qun as young adults and settled in the Free Marches. In an interview conducted in 9:42 Dragon transcribed below, Chandler Tennyson, former leader of the mercenary band the Ruby Drakes, described the recruitment of the Adaars.

“It wasn’t exactly amicable. Hired to kill ‘em, actually. They were holed up outside some little nowheresville out of Starkhaven and freaking out the little people. Don’t think they actually did anything, mind, aside from Big Mama there charging anybody who got near her girl. But gold’s gold, so we take it.

“We get in there waving our swords around, somebody pops Big Mama off the horn, and it’s like the ground’s been beat like a drum, you know? We all go flying back and in the middle’s the Lady, those big red eyes just staring at us. I won’t do ‘em the disservice of naming names, but half the mercs hit the ground running. Look, you wanna mess with a Qunari, fine. Bring the biggest damn shield you can find, but fine. But any company who’s worth their shit knows you don’t fuck with the magic ones.

“Anyway, most our band’s off like inbred mabari and it’s just me, that Orlesian bastard, and some knife-eared thief who only lasted a month, all just kinda holding defensive and begging Andraste we don’t die. And there’s some solid minutes of waiting for one of us to start trying to kill the other again before that shit-for-brains Orlesian starts honest-to-Andraste speaking Qunlat. Shitty, come to find out, but enough. They’re fresh-faced out of Par Vollen and they’ve got nowhere to be. So why not come with us?

“Maker’s honest truth we never scored that good again. Told the contract they were nice and dead. Kept the gold, Big Mama, her big axe, and the Lady. Every thorn in our side decided not to be after that.”

Letters and other documents from the company indicate the Adaars’ involvement for at least another decade, long into the early years of the Inquisitor’s life, before their retirement in 9:26 Dragon. The Orlesian, Évariste Toussaint, a self-described “bard school drop-out” and avid study of language, taught the Adaars Orlesian Sign Language, which would prove instrumental to the band and couple both. Although the exact circumstances are unknown, correspondence from Toussaint indicates the excision of Lady’s tongue as one of several inciting events in their flight from the Qun. Toussaint remained a close family friend until his death in 9:39 Dragon.

Although not physically present for much of their son’s time as Inquisitor, their history with the Inquisition is chronicled through the many letters exchanged between them throughout the years of his leadership.