The starlit mere of Cuiviénen

And people think Alistair x Cousland is boring - fine, fair, AGAIN, a lot to explore there that they just. Didn’t. Because the writers were so chuffed with making the grimdark fantasy horror game that they did, that somehow they seemed to miss all these fantastic opportunities for world building (affectionately).

But have you considered? Calenhad Theirin, in his attempt to unite the teyrnirs, the Clayne tribes, had almost accomplished it when this firebrand of a teyrna, Elethea Cousland, says fuck you and your army, I am not doing shit for you, this is my house - so they duke it out on the battlefield, until she finally is defeated because Calenhad is the Thedosian version of King Arthur and is a Very Special and Mythical Hero who supposedly cannot come to harm so long as he stands on Fereldan soil, and she finally swears fealty to him, ensuring that the Couslands retain the teyrnir despite their initial resistance.

Fast forward 500 years, both of them are now legends and their respective descendants are the two people tasked with not only ending a Blight but also ending a civil war that threatens to undo the unification their fore-bearers were so instrumental to so long ago.

And then their descendants fall in love. The descendant of the woman who would have preferred to stand free than capitulate to a merchant’s son who got lucky falls in love with the descendant of the man who defeated her and forced her to swear fealty to him. There is a real, epic poetry to all of this…and we are forced to just…not acknowledge the sheer destiny of it all. It gets completely glazed over.

We glaze over the daughter of the Sea Wolf, the granddaughter of the Storm Giant, both famous rebels who fought against the Orlesian Navy, falling in love with the bastard son of the first king to return to the throne in Denerim after the occupation. We glaze over the contrast of a woman groomed to proudly inherit arguably the second most powerful seat in the kingdom and a man who with every fiber of his being resists the destiny of his own lineage, the magic of his bloodline that has shaped the Thedosian South for five hundred years, the luck of being another Very Special and Mythical Hero. Somehow, five hundred years after their ancestors clashed over the rule of what would become Ferelden, they found themselves on a converging path that was centuries in the making.

If anyone had ever drawn fanart of this moment, I would use it with credit but without asking them for permission and you would not have a problem with it. But nobody has ever drawn fanart of this moment. No concept art of it exists. The only images of it are screencaps of an Xbox 360 game, with Xbox 360 model and texture quality, where no single frame actually captures all the elements of the event (the laser only fires when nothing else is in frame, the Savior and the demons getting lasered are never in the same frame, the lighting is really bad and the Savior's details can't be made out). In order to use this card I designed, I have exactly two options:

- I can use Gemini to synthesize the pose and framing from one frame, the laser from later on, and the detailed design from a frame where it's clearly visible, redraw it in a more painterly style, and create an image that does not look like complete shit and conveys what moment the card represents.

- I can use an X360 screenshot that looks like complete shit and doesn't actually get across the visual of the event it depicts.

If you create because you want to "be a creative" that's fine I'm sure but it has nothing to do with where I'm at - I create because I want to have a creative work. The reason I don't use AI for illustrations is because I don't need any illustrations. If I did, I'd use AI.

SINGLE

A she-wolf who reigned the Amaranthine sea.