#seracadash

A Gift for my beloved and incredible @seracadash <3 Her very own adopted son from her extremely good Inquisitor Maddox comic!!

aro Nikki!! I love her so dearly and I'm so sad about her forever

here is arospec flag Nikki in case anybody wants it <3

Werewolves: Okay idk if this is controversial, but I really don't care for DAO's werewolves and I'm glad they don't return in the other games. I don't really like Nature of the Beast's plot or the level design of the forest (<- always gets lost), which makes me biased against them, but I also just don't think Thedas as a setting needs werewolves on top of all the other shit it has going on. I'd be more interested in seeing werewolf-esque narratives applied to shape shifting mages, who are pretty underutilised.

But also apart from that.... when Hawke dies he still tells cassandra he is going to tell anders about this. He knows where he is and when hawke is not there to protect anders, varric still wont sell him out. He already got interrogated for where is his dear friend Hawke, if he talked fondly of anders both him and anders would be in more trouble. That he talks shit of Anders makes people get off his back and also dont expect him to know where he is.

I think bioware's political ideas being projected onto him kinda muddled it for me, but when I look at it from that angle it does actually make more sense. Anders did force things to change when Varric would have been happy for them to stay the way they were. When Anders talked about a revolution, he tried to distract him and believed it was Justice talking when he got all serious. Maybe he's also a little mad at himself for not paying enough attention to the red flags that something really was going to happen.

thank you!!!! (questions from here)

What is Rook's opinion on magic/mage rights, and how does that differ from your other protagonists?

Esha is far and away the most liberal on mage rights, if you can call it that. She always kind of assumed that the horror stories about the southern Circles were highblood propaganda designed to scare laetan into believing the current class system was the only option available to them - it's not until she makes friends with Lucien that she realises 'wait, no, at least some of it was actually true, what the fuck'. The idea of discriminating against anyone based on having magic makes no sense whatsoever to her.

Neria is probably the second most liberal of the four. She thinks very little about the Circle system, and holds a deep grudge against Kinloch Hold and First Enchanter Irving specifically. Warden mages do just fine controlling themselves, that nastiness in the Western Approach aside. All the Circles ever did was create a breeding ground for horrors like the ones she saw going through Kinloch Hold on her return - but none of that is really her business.

Garrett - eternal centrist that he is - thinks the Circles should be a little more open, but not done away with altogether. Sure, he, Bethany and Malcolm did okay without them, but that's because Malcolm was a good teacher. Most other mages would probably have struggled and lost their way, in their situation. The Hawkes were special.

Lucien is the most conservative of the four. As far as he's concerned, the Circle system is fine - the problem is with the corrupt Templar leadership and a few bad apples in the Templar rank and file. Replacing them with better people will fix it, probably. The fact that the very idea of sending his daughter to the Circle sends him into a near panic attack is insignificant and should be disregarded.

Will he reckon with any of it? Maybe, eventually, probably many years post-Veilguard - by which point Dora will have been trained in the Tevinter style, not the southern one.

How would each of your protagonists handle the Game? Are they good at navigating politics/diplomacy in general?

Neria and Garrett in heartfelt unison - dear god, no. Garrett can smooth a lot of things over with his cheerfulness and some mild flirting, and Neria has the weight of authority on her side, but neither of them are any good in formal political situations. They try to avoid them wherever possible.

Esha hates it. Diplomacy brings her out in hives. However, growing up in the Minrathous Circle did teach her a lot about how to navigate formal political bullshit, and post-Veilguard she puts it to use as the first elf to be raised to the Magisterium. There may or may not be an area of the catacombs where she goes to break stuff after sessions.

“Can’t rush all these feelings, have to work it out”.