My little corner

Thank you so much for the tag @greypetrel! Your WIPs are stunning already and I really can't wait to see the final products! 💕

I'm apparently up to 390 hours of BG3 now across all playthroughs so about time I do something for it, even if it's barely (read not even vaguely) disguised Atlin. Sort of trying out ideas for @onepixelaway's matching outfit tag. If anyone has any other ideas/suggestions for them I can see what I can come up with. Debating whether the tentacle should remain sensually touching or should be coming out of his toga (or should I add another and do both).

In addition I have been writing more for the Atton Lost AU, so I'll share a bit of that below the cut. It feels so good to write Atton being genuinely emotional after he spends an entire game/story burying his emotions or else weaponizing them.

It's Wednesday and I have wips!

1. Slowly going on with this Awakening piece. I'm juggling the background and can't wait for it to be finished. I like the texture of the throne tho!

2. I saw one painting in a museum and went "omg those are my characters!". So yeah, mama and papa cullavellan are making the babies pose, with different results.

3. Not Dragon Age related but who cares. I saw Legend of Aang. Twice. And am quite hyped with Sonam and her design. I'm making myself a new phone background. The tattoos are gonna get added in the colouring phase.

4. Last page of Cicero's character design, these are the casual outfits + armour. I'm stuck on the armour design, I'd love some reminders to Mughal armours, but I'm struggling a bit to mix that silhouette with his own. I like the skirt and it'd look good in fight scenes but it's too square. Their shape language is "roundish for body. Triangles for clothes and accessories.". MH. I'll have to sketch something on paper.

a little rendering practice

Chapter fifteen, in which moral conflict brings Shepard and Cullen together again.

Over the next week, Shepard did a remarkable job of acting like Cullen didn’t exist, which on its face should have been a good thing. But it wasn’t. He’d thought her bright eyes and warm smiles had been bad — yet now her expression was blank, her eyes cold, and the way she looked through him rather than at him was far worse than the trouble she’d brought.  He respected her. More than that, he liked her. That was undeniable now — and dangerous. He had few friends in Kirkwall; his position put him at a distance from other templars and the residents of the city, and in the lulls between his shifts it sometimes struck him how lonely his existence was. Shepard had forced companionship into those cracks, unbidden and unwanted, and had somehow reminded him what it was to feel human. Now it was gone, because of what his people had done to hers — and because, even after all he’d seen, he couldn’t bear to accept the Order might be wrong. He tried to throw himself into his work as a distraction, as he had done for so many years, but it seemed Meredith no longer trusted him, passing him over for missions and restricting him to courtyard duty. Her grip on order shook further every day, each action turning increasingly unpredictable — and Cullen, who had resisted thinking about it for far too long, now found it too glaring to ignore. The punishments she gave out were more severe and for lesser offences, new Tranquil mages walked the courtyard every day; templar patrols were doubled whilst she holed herself up in her office for hours on end, scribbling barely-legible commands to her soldiers.

Continue on AO3

uh. the significance of that particular point in time just occurred to me, specifically in relation to the gallows itself.

because alistair and the warden are happily pelting around ferelden right this moment with a newly liberated morrigan, an adorable zombie granny, a tal-vashoth sten, a mabari, a nun/bard, and a sexy, sexy antivan crow, right? and one of the places they may be present in… is kinloch hold.

….the gallows may be a horror show but say a prayer for the future knight-captain, lads. he’s currently off being extensively tortured right this minute by blood mages in a different circle tower!

either that or he’s locked up in a chantry to “recover.” for like. a hot second. how long does it take before hawke meets cullen in kirkwall? two, three years? not long enough.

i mean no wonder the guy is trying new intimidation tactics that nearly get him killed and falls back to repeating dogma when confronted with opinions on mages!!! he’s practically a fuckin teenager!

fresh from a nightmare-inducing trauma at ferelden circle, wants to impress his absolutely terrifying knight-commander

and the stakes are SUPER high because not only did she specifically import him to kirkwall to specifically imbue him with a fear & hatred of mages in order to take her spot….. but he also took his vows like, two years ago & older templars resent it, his parents died in the Blight & he undoubtedly doesn’t even know where his siblings went yet. he is reliant on the templars for lyrium and alone in a strange city. obeying the knight-commander’s orders without question is literally his only option.

and now the recruits he’s meant to be training and protecting (some of whom may be older than him????) are going missing and he’s worried they’re dead or in thrall to blood mages

worst of all, now he’s made a complete tit of himself in front of a pretty girl with a big sword. and her judgy friends

:(

And Cullen has a canonical birth year, too. Which means we have a very good idea of how old he was during Act 1 of DA2.

My poor boy was only twenty, maybe going on twenty-one, when he meets Hawke the first time.

Like seriously. He's barely not a teenager, still freshly traumatized, probably getting extra doses of lyrium to help him cope with that, and under the worst Knight-Commander ever's command.

and thank god cullen was a decent enough human to eventually start questioning meredith’s ideals (codex entry from DA2: Knight-Captain Cullen)

Day 7 - Sneaky

Last day of @dragonagekissweek, I went for two OCs. A sneaky kiss mid-experiment. Nothing to see, Niamh (my cullavellan baby) and Cicero clearly hate each other, they're sworn enemies, each other's nemesis, as you can clearly see. Under the cut: first traditional version!

Our next preview comes from the In War section, featuring Alistair and Duncan, with art by @sacherali!

To participate, just post your works during the week using #alistairweek or #alistairweek2026 If you missed the prompt announcement, you can see them here. See our rules/guidelines here and FAQ here for more information.

DA Kiss Week- Injury