😞 = Finding an orphaned child would your muse opt to take them in, find someone more qualified, or just leave them?
Have a lovely day!! 🙌🌟🌟🌟
😞 = Finding an orphaned child would your muse opt to take them in, find someone more qualified, or just leave them?
Novhen: He could never abandon a child in need! He's going to find out if there are any relatives or people who knew his parents still around who may be able to take them in. Just because someone's an orphan doesn't mean they have to go to a stranger. Soris and Shianni were both orphaned and sent to live with an uncle, and they turned out fine!
If it's just some meteor baby with no leads on their identity, he hands them over to the next hahren he can find if they're elven or *shudders* the Chantry if not. His lifestyle isn't safe for children, but if the kid's particularly determined and convincing about it, he might just let them stay with him
Radka: She'll probably point the kid in the direction of someone more qualified, but if they're already latched onto her, she's sticking a hat on them and declaring them part of the crew. Massive win for the child endangerment fandom
Remember to tag your creations with the #dakiss26 tag! I aim to reblog everybody who participates and I will set up a queue to that effect. It would be awesome if you joined me on this! If you don’t want your work to be reblogged here, please say so in the tags!
[Image ID: An image of the quest journal in Dragon Age The Veilguard, with a header that reads: Dragon Age Kiss Week Prompts. Under it there's a column of prompts that reads: Day 1 - Camp, Day 2 - Injury, Day 3 - Courtyard, Day 4 - Exploration, Day 5 - Beach, Day 6 - Mourning, Day 7 - Sneaky. Under the prompts, the event's tag #dakiss26 /.End ID]
The Inquisitor can get put on this pedestal - a shining beacon of hope, a divine symbol of victory, calm in the chaos. And you can absolutely play a very compassionate, open-minded Inquisitor who's kind - a positive example of leadership.
But what always gets me is the scale of the decisions and judgments they’re forced to make and the horrifying consequences. Choose the mages or the templars, and one of those groups is left to suffer in horrific ways - torment, torture, death, madness, mutilation. Thousands are left to violence inflicted on them, force-fed blight. Then there are the consequences that ripple out from those choices too - villages enslaved, people forced into manual labour, innocent people killed, ordinary lives ruined because of decisions made from a war table by the Inquisitor.
Those are the choices the Inquisitor has to live with. Every time they look into the eyes of a blighted templar or a blighted mage before cutting them down, they’re killing someone they left to their fate. Someone who might have been saved, if the Inquisitor had chosen differently.
What does Solas say? "Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain."
And imagine the people who’d hate them for that.
Then the Inquisitor has to sit in judgment on a throne and decide the fate of individuals. And in the words of Josie, lives should never be used as currency. But in war - in a supernatural war - they are and the Inquisitor can use them as such. Do you use those lives for your own needs? Do you cut them down in vengeance, or give them a punishment that fits the crime?
And better yet - what if they’re good at the Game?
My own Inquisitor chooses Briala. It’s one of the few moments in the story where I let my Dalish Inquisitor make a selfish decision, one that’s meant to benefit her people. But that decision results in the death of the Empress, and while that isn’t what she wanted, it happened, and now that's another person's blood that stains her hands.
So now you have an Inquisitor who isn’t just making battlefield decisions. They’re wheeling and dealing in secrets, spying, blackmailing, and exchanging information through the shadows. Whether they love the Game or hate it doesn’t really matter - they still sought out the secrets and manipulated powerful people - they pulled the strings of a massive political and military dynasty.
The War Table missions throw in even more consequences depending on what choices you make in succession. Maybe they don't feel as tense as we only read of the consequences, we don't see them with our own eyes. There are a series of Grey Warden missions that if you choose poorly, can push them almost to extinction. And how many agents and assassins did the Inquisitor have at their fingertips to deploy at will? It continued on even past Trespasser - that pesky Inquisitor, getting involved in Nevarran business - who do they thing they are?
And whether you have an Inquisitor who revels in the role or rejects it, the Inquisitor still enacted judgment. They still made those choices and caused irrevocable harm to other people. They were always destroying a world that belonged to someone else. They were always making people living comfortably, very uncomfortable. Solas has dialogue in Veilguard about how his own rebellion made comfortable people, uncomfortable - it would seem if anyone knows what the Inquisitor faces best, it's him.
I imagine some people being delighted to see the great Eye and Sword emblem of the Inquisitor marching into town - while others feared it, or hated it.
And what will the propaganda say about our beloved Inquisitor two hundred years from now, especially considering what was erased about Ameridan? Considering how history changed the tales of the Fen'Harel - the Dread Wolf?
Dorian seemed almost downright prophetic when he said Magister Pavus couldn’t come to Skyhold and be seen with the “dread Inquisitor.” Imagine a servant in that inn, working quietly in the back, overhearing this conversation. They catch that one title - the dread Inquisitor - and whisper it to someone else. Then that person whispers it to someone else, and before you know it:
The Dread Inquisitor, indeed.
So, how does all this weigh on a person?
How does your own Inquisitor live with their decisions?
I think it's very easy for an Inquisitor to take Solas' path entirely, and bear the responsibility for everyone else's choices. And that can lead someone either to eat themselves with guilt, and take failure personally, or to head down the path of being a tyrant, because its their responsibility, they might as well be in control.
My Inquisitor headed off into the Fade with Solas precisely to avoid becoming a tyrant, because that's where she was definitely headed. She had really had it with Orlais and their civil wars in the midst of world ending crises.
Remember to tag your creations with the #dakiss26 tag! I aim to reblog everybody who participates and I will set up a queue to that effect. It would be awesome if you joined me on this! If you don’t want your work to be reblogged here, please say so in the tags!
[Image ID: An image of the quest journal in Dragon Age The Veilguard, with a header that reads: Dragon Age Kiss Week Prompts. Under it there's a column of prompts that reads: Day 1 - Camp, Day 2 - Injury, Day 3 - Courtyard, Day 4 - Exploration, Day 5 - Beach, Day 6 - Mourning, Day 7 - Sneaky. Under the prompts, the event's tag #dakiss26 /.End ID]
hi!! you said that evidence points to kirkwall being where the magisters broke into the fade. can you elaborate on that? (if u have the time!!)
Kirkwall was founded a couple hundred years before the first blight. The placement of it is odd, and there was no real advantage to it that a mage based civilisation like Tevinter would require. Unless there was a need that we didn’t know, or that all that was needed was a place a bit out of the way, where things might go unnoticed.
So point one here is that Kirkwall is fucked up. Like deeply fucked up. The veil is in fucking tatters. It’s prone to haunting and possessions, and mages in the gallows have generally worse outcomes because the veil is so damaged. Like we joke about Kirkwall being fucked up, but there’s straight up something deeply deeply wrong with the veil in that place, and a ritual to break into the fade sure would do that.
Second point is the design of Kirkwall itself. It was clearly designed to handle large amounts of blood magic. It has drainage systems specifically for the blood of sacrificed slaves, and the streets are built in the shapes of glyphs. It was very clearly built FOR something, something specific. There’s also an elaborate system of tunnels underneath, in which mages conducted research. Secret research, that they had to keep hidden.
There were also a lot of slaves that went through Kirkwall, but a large amount that went missing from any record. Multiple records were forged to try and hide the discrepancy. Sacrificing slaves for blood magic was pretty normal in those days, so the only reason to hide it would be that you were doing rituals that you didn’t want discovered. The amount of slaves estimated to be sacrificed is in the thousands per year. The power that would generate is unimaginable and there would be very few needs for that much power.
Now, the canticle of silence tells the series of events leading to the first blight from the Tevinter perspective.
The first person to start work on the ritual was the priest of Dumat (corypheus). However after he’d been working on it for a time his first acolyte (which, side note, I think was an executor and this is the extent of the whispering the veilguard scene was getting at) suggested getting the worshipers of Urthemiel (led by urthemiels priest, the architect, because worshipers of Urthemiel were referred to as the architects and the builders) involved. The reason to get them involved was so that they, the builders, could “build [them] a road to the golden city”.
The ritual is said to require slaves beyond counting, and someone disagrees with it and goes to minrathous to tell the archon of it, but the ritual is already completed by the time he reaches it.
So, the canticle of silence describes the ritual as taking place somewhere quite a distance from minrathous. It tells us it took a number of sacrifices so unimaginably large that even some Tevinter magisters were weirded out by it, and it implies that the architect and the builders who worshiped Urthemiel built something specific to allow it to happen.
And then we’ve got a city where the veil is extremely thin which indicates actions taking place there that damage the veils integrity, which is some distance from minrathous with no obvious advantage to its placement that would indicate why a city should be built there, where magisters did secret research, thousands of slaves disappeared from records, and which appears to have been custom built for an extremely powerful ritual requiring powerful glyphs and runes and large quantities of blood.
Air (fanfic. Astala has had bad experiences regarding sex; Zevran talks her down from a panic attack)
Before the Beginning (fanfic. slice of life, Astala and her friends at the Alienage)
The Story of One Astala Tabris (longfic about her)
The Matchmakers of Vigil’s Keep (fanfic. the Awakening companions get played by Zevran and Astala)
Transcription of the other texts under the cut
Basics
Class: warrior (dual wielding, archer)
Specialization: Champion (picks it up in Redcliffe), Berserker (her true calling), Reaver (during Awakening; the chronic pain works for her now. This is when she switches to archery)
Age: 23 (born in 9:07 Dragon)
Pronouns: she/her
Sexual/romantic orientation: demisexual, straight
Hair: black, 3B curls,
Eyes: black, deep
Features: hooked nose, strong chin, long and irregularly shaped ears
Height: around 1,67 m (5’4)
Build: broad shoulders, narrow hips, gaunt chest. Starts out scrawny, goes to buff, finally gets some fat on her during Awakening.
Others: starts out with acne scars. Over the course of the Blight she acquires several battle scars. The archdemon scorches the right side of her face and breaks her left hip bone (chronic pain, uses a cane)
Romanced: Zevran
Story
Before the Blight:
Soris gets taken in when she’s 3, Shianni when she’s 5
Her mother disappears when she’s 14, father left in a depressive slump. Astala has to rely on herself, her cousins and the larger community of the Alienage
Starts working at the docks at 15 (stacking crates). Takes on a second job at 16 (night shift at a tavern). Cyrion wanted her to be a servant, Astala refused bc she can’t stand having to suck up to the nobility
Was genuinely excited to get married. Grieved Nelaros for a long time.
After the Blight:
Some months recovering from the battle
Arlessa of Amaranthine (but not Warden-Commander due to injuries) for roughly 10 years
Finds the cure
Gets driven out of Amaranthine
Goes to Antiva, becomes a merchant
6 kids (3 adopted and 3 biological)
Trivia
Loves her friends
Family above everything
Very hurt bc her mom “left” and her dad was too busy grieving to take care of her
Likes it rowdy
Is noisy: loud laugh, loud anger
Very very very aware of the careful balance needed to get your due & not anger the humans
Careful with money
Protective
Actually wanted to start a family; heartbroken that she can’t
on the verge of passing out but the 'templars Can retire to val royeaux' does bounce around my head a lot. you could stay in your home country and have your loves ones watch your slow deterioration or you could slowly deteriorate in fucking orlais, but if this is an established setup within the system then presumably they have specific facilities and people and resources that specialize in caring for retired templars in their last years. and it's also very much presented as an honor and a reward. you know.
Templar 1: He should have retired to Val Royeaux years ago, but he wanted to stay and serve the remainder of his days in his homeland. It's the lyrium that does this.
Player: Lyrium did this to him? Why doesn't he stop taking it?
Templar 1: He wouldn't be a templar anymore.
Templar 2: "Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter."
Templar 1: He doesn't forget who he is, even if he can't remember anything else.
i thiiink this is the only actual mention we get of val royeaux as a place where templars can retire to? so the fact this very binary choice is mentioned in origins, with specifically fereldan templars, adds a whole other layer of implications... we would never say andrastianism is constrained by political borders, but the chantry as an institution is very much orlesian. :)
sometimes i still think about how the dragon age series was about all sort of ways slavery kept existing and the different shapes it took and how deeply engrained into society this type of exploitment is, culmunating with it's future antagonist being a radical anti-slavery person who talked about all the things he saw being as slavery and that he would see the world be freed of, only for the fourth game to refuse to acknowledge slavery, to call the anti-slavery crusade the character had "a failure so why should he try it again", to have a slaver order around said character who was implied to have been her slave as the good ending, where we were deep into slave societies only to be told slavery was something only extremists were doing, and then when asked about it the devs just went "everyone knows slavery is bad we didn't need to talk about it" making people sound like some sort of perverts for wanting to see slavery be actually acknowledged on screen..... still the stupidity of all time.
Don't forget the pope of the slavery empire deciding that the best way to combat slavery is to be a street level vigilante who doesn't even focus on burning records or slave ships, instead of just making it illegal to own or sell other people. And also he has a rug in his secret hideout depicting elven slaves in manacles but don't read too much into that
ZevWarden Week 2026 dates have been decided! This year, ZevWarden Week will run September 1st through 7th, 2026!
What is it? ZevWarden week is a prompted week event to celebrate Zevran Arainai and his beloved Warden(s). We will be reblogging newly created fan works during the event! Please keep in mind this event is 18+!
Prompts will be shared soon! Follow @zevraholics or track the '#zevwardenweek26' tag for updates!
I DID NOT give up on my series of one fave per each DA game, and there he is, my Inquisition hubby...I always suspected they didn't go with his concept art design because it would be too powerful and good </3 but it can be canon in my heart.
I gotta draw one for Veilguard eventually, but it's just gonna be another Emmrich, I've lost count at this point 😅
discoholicmusic
areudirty
jacobvanloon
