#arcane warrior

May i interest you in my Warden Kiera from my Origins play through and my fan fiction I am currently working on.

My story follows two Wardens.

Kiera, a witty elf who spent her life pursuing knowledge, living the joys of the forest. In line to be the Keeper's first when life completely flipped upside down, losing everything. She was banished from her clan, forced out of Arlathan and down into gritty Ferelden with its backward views on magic, and right into the Wardens, which was never what she wanted. At least she had the enigmatic witch and her companions to keep her company during the long year. It wasn't a life she envisioned, but it was what she had, and she would at least enjoy it while she could, even if she was constantly being whacked by Morrigan's staff.

Growing up in the Circle, Amelia lived a repressed life. She'd always been one to help those close to her, which is how she ended up with the Wardens and by Kiera's side. She was fairly certain that if it wasn't for her guidance, her best friend would certainly make some wild decisions. She was the oddest mage the woman had ever seen. Amelia was one to keep to herself and stay in the background, which, being taller than most people, was sometimes difficult. For all the anxieties she had, there was one thing that could keep her grounded: the beautiful bard who warmed her bedroll each night.

CONFESSION

Alternately, would you like to talk about the arcane warrior -> knight enchanter thing and how the chantry getting ahold of ancient elven battle magic might have occurred? And what that means for the Greater Lore?

Anyways love your blog and you have the best takes ❤️

i actually just made a joke about the obvious similarities of force magic and rift magic and it’s @miraculan-draws who had the really great take about the veil in kirkwall that made me take this seriously!

it really can’t be overstated how fucked the veil is in kirkwall. the sheer amount of demons out and about! the way you can just become an abomination with a snap of your fingers no trip into the fade to make contact with demons necessary! good lord! it’s also worth noting that it’s not even just the mass suffering and slavery that has happened here and is literally painted onto the walls; kirkwall, insanely, is intentionally built in the form of giant glyphs and iirc it’s implied it was used by magisters as a mass blood ritual for entering the fade, possibly even THE entering the fade? not to mention corypheus’ prison nearby or keeping the mages in the GALLOWS of all places or the histories of occupation or sundermount. mass death and suffering causes tears in the veil. nobody should live in kirkwall. nobody should fucking live there. it would totally make sense if force magic, a brand of magic specifically noted to be popular in kirkwall, required the same closeness to the fade as rift magic. kirkwallers don’t need a breach they literally just live like that

as for arcane warrior/knight enchanter, it’s covered really interestingly by ariane in the witch hunt dlc and velanna in the awakening dlc that a lot of the circle’s magical knowledge is essentially appropriated from ancient elven knowledge that they were able to preserve while the dalish were robbed of it. that’s what’s happening when you take ariane to kinloch to get information on eluvians and some random young human mage knows more than her and her keeper, and ariane talks about this at the time. velanna and anders also have this banter:

it comes up a lot in anders’ banters with dalish mages that he is coming from having grown up in a place intended for the sharing and discussion of magical knowledge, where bickering academic rivalries as well as political ones are commonplace, and learning from each other and living side by side is what makes them better safer mages. (which is one thing abt the circle i think he actually misses and tries, however awkwardly, to seek out. imo he’s just parroting “great civilisations are built on the sharing of ideas” here, it sounds way more like something that’s been said to him than something he would think. he wants to talk abt magic bc he’s lonely and on the run and used to be surrounded by people to talk abt magic with! vivienne talks abt this more intentionally, she makes good points abt mages thriving when they’re together among those who can understand them.) whereas merrill and velanna grow up in a background where magic is quite individual and private, shared from one keeper to one first and (according to merrill) never practised in public, and that’s a safety measure to protect them from templars and to protect elven knowledge from being taken away from them as it has been previously. so obviously they’re not engaging with the first human mage trying to blunder his way into discussion with no sensitivity at all by picking the kind of fights he’s used to, which velanna and merrill obviously wouldn’t have context for