Dragon Age with a side of Mass Effect

Here’s Day 5 of ‘12 Days of Dragon Age’, a clip of fauna from the DAI dev vault.

Krem Portrait!

New series means new Krem because I LOVE HIM AND ALWAYS WILL.

For acequeenking, who asked for quarian romance/dating/marriage. I had only got as far as romance/dating when I was already over 1500 words, so marriage will have to wait in the interest of not spamming everyone forever.

(As a reminder, feel free to drop me headcanon prompts if you’re interested–I love getting them and am generally delighted to fill them.)

The question of “how do quarians date?” is very much like the question “how do hedgehogs have sex?” The answer: very carefully.

Most aliens assume that the reason for this “very carefully” is the delicate quarian immune system, which makes suitless sex quite dangerous, but that isn’t actually the case. Quarians have figured out any number of workarounds for that–mostly involving the multiperson functionality of the Nerve Stim programming–and the inability to take their suits off regularly for sex doesn’t cause them many problems.

No, the real reason that quarians have to be very careful in their romantic relationships is more social than physical. Quarians live their entire lives in close quarters with one another, and most Flotilla ships are not large. The Flotilla has fifty thousand ships, and seventeen million members–for an average of 340 quarians per ship–but once you factor out the larger-than-average capacities of the liveships and frigates, the average is even lower. Under normal circumstances, a quarian will live their entire adult life on the same ship. In addition, even on larger ships, quarians are generally grouped into smaller clusters who are quartered near where they work–even the enormous liveships do not have the infrastructure to move large numbers of quarians around on a regular basis, so it makes sense to have them live and work in the same area. The end result is that most quarians spend essentially all their time with the same smallish group of people their entire lives. 

Which means that if you have a disastrous breakup, “I never want to see him/her again” is about as likely as “I would like to sprout wings and fly to Tuchanka.” It’s sort of like living in the same dormitory in college, but for the rest of your life. So quarians have to find ways to ensure that they do not leave a string of hideously awkward encounters and/or terrible breakups behind them.

• Neldrai: An asari food that is similar to crispy fried pawn, but incredibly spicy and usually served inside of a baked meva, a huge type of bean, topped with a sweet sour sauce.

• Pimoya stick: Different types of fish served on a stick, a common appetizer. Usually contains some sprouts as well to add some spice.

• Gaeria, a beautiful, cocoa colored fruit with a delicious bright green pudding on the inside. This pudding is very healthy yet incredibly sweet and often also used as a dip for Neldrai. During movie nights, many asari will just dip some fish into pudding. It’s also good for your hair. Many humans use Gaeria shampoo!

• Gova salad, contains helva sprouts, a type of extremely aromatic, black sprouts, as well as a red rice, neldrai and yofa beans, a type of teal bean. Served with a delicious, hefty sauce.

* One idea that BioWare never took quite seriously: rideable dragons. “[EA’s CEO] John Riccitiello told us we should have the ability to ride dragons,” said Mark Darrah. “That would make it sell ten million copies.” (Dragon Age: Inquisition did not have rideable dragons.)

Cullen is just walking the battlements when he stumbles upon the dead body of the first assassin. And he’s like, “Why is there a dead body lying in the middle of the battlements?”

And one of the random scouts/soldiers who’s always hanging out there goes, “Oh, that’s one of the guys who tried to assassinate Iron Bull.”

And Cullen is just like: