OOOHHHHH DUDE! I completely forgot that I can post on here about my Templartations piece!! Reveals have been revealed!
Well.
I wrote this for @/NastyMage on AO3, who requested tragic, dark, forbidden love for one of their OCs and either TemplarAU! Alistair or Cullen.
So! May I present:
The Harrowing of Lowen Amell
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 38,500
Tag Smorgasbord: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Pre-Dragon Age: Origins Quest - Broken Circle; Mage-Templar Dynamics; Mage Abuse and Oppression; Kinloch Hold; Whump; Hurt No Comfort; Dubious Consent; Rape/Non-con Elements; Gay Panic; Awkward Cullen Rutherford; Sweet Cullen Rutherford; Religious Guilt; Loss of Virginity; The Harrowing; Canon-Typical Violence; Sexual Violence; Self-Hatred; Physical Abuse; Shame; Smut, Angst, and Tragedy; Sexual Coercion; Abuse of Authority; Manipulative Relationship; Crisis of Faith; Bottom Cullen Rutherford; Possibly Unrequited Love; Sad Ending; You Have Been Warned
Read it in full on AO3! First chapter under the cut 😌
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"I'm sorry, Lady Amell. It's the law."
The Templar Captain pushed his way past the front door out into the courtyard, his gauntleted hand resting on the shoulder of a young child. The girl sniffled once but otherwise cried silently as she was herded away from her family, too terrified of the gargantuan metal man directing her forward with weighty hands to put up a fuss.
"But she's just a little girl, messere! She didn't know what she was doing! No one was even hurt!"
"You know just as well as I that it matters little; she burned down the entire west transept of the Chantry! Mages cannot be left to their own devices once discovered, no matter how blue their blood. She's for the Circle now."
"No, no, no! You can't take my little girl!"
"Revka, don't! It's over." A man, her husband, her André, held firm to her arms as though he expected her to take a swing at the man stealing their child away.
"Please!"
"Madame, you would do well to focus your devotion on the Maker and your remaining children. This… mageling, is not your daughter any longer."
"No!"
It was a scream to curdle the blood, to make it run cold. The woman wrenched herself from her husband's grasp and crashed to the floor in the process, reaching uselessly for the hem of the young girl's dress as the babe in her arms wailed in distress.
"Revka, please! They have to take her," he crouched by her side, trying to offer assistance. Comfort.
"No! Don't you take their side in this, André! Don't you dare!"
Their eyes met; her steely Amell blue versus his mossy green. But both were filled with terror. She could see the plea written plain on his face. Please, don't make this worse. These monsters don't have to be kindly about what they're doing. She pushed him away.
"We're leaving." The Templar Captain turned and steered the girl away from them.
"Mama!"
"Sylvie, my heart!" Revka made a mad dash for the girl, stumbling over her dress, rending the fabric while just barely keeping hold of the babe in her arms, who screamed helplessly. She was crushing him to her chest.
The Templar Captain stopped them all, drawing his sword from its scabbard in a long, slow motion.
"Mama!"
"Madame, step away from the girl. I will not warn you again." The blade tip pointed downward, but she knew a simple wrist flick was all that stood between her and the other side of the Veil.
"She's my blood, messere! Nine months I carried her! Nearly died bringing her into this world!" Now she was openly weeping.
"I do not wish to harm you, but I will if you refuse to step away. Think of your other children, Lady Amell. They're already losing a sister today." The Templar Captain pushed the girl behind him, raising the sword in front of himself in a defensive posture; perpendicular to her body but still ready to slash.
"Revka?! What in the void is going on?" her brother, Damion, appeared in the doorway, fear and shock souring his normally ebullient expression.
"They're stealing my Sylvie away from me! They're stealing my child!" she roared.
The baby screamed his fear from his mother's arms as she blubbered and shouted at the men taking Sylvie away. Revka tripped, landing hard on her shoulder and jostling the babe from her grip. Damion steadied his sister and took the squalling boy from her arms.
"It's alright, Lowen. Shhhh, it's alright, little one," He tried to soothe the babe, but his mother's panic and terror had clearly been picked up by the child, who was now red-faced and bawling.
The babe's pained cries echoed across the courtyard, mirroring the silent tears of his big sister as the Templar Captain turned the little girl away from her family and tutted her forward onto the road. Revka followed behind, pleading for her daughter and shouting invective at her 'kidnappers' by turns as they walked towards the Gallows.
Damion bounced the terrified baby on his hip and exchanged a look with his brother-in-law. "This will not end well, André."
"I know," André sniffled. He wiped his face and took the babe from Damion's arms, "But what is there to be done? Maker, what can we do?!" He held Lowen close, dripping tears down his little neck as Damion put a hand on his shoulder in a hollow gesture of comfort.
Revka trailed behind the somber procession, wailing her grief through the streets for all to hear, and witness, and turn a blind eye toward. All the way to the Gallows, where the silently sobbing child disappeared into the old slaver fortress; never to be seen again by those who loved her.
good art is when something looks like real life, the more real it looks the more better the art. abstracted figures give my trad children nightmares, one time they were exposed to cubism and couldn't go outside for a week
What if I was so exhausted from battle I cannot think properly.... and what if the only goal was to get back to you.... and what if once I reached you to make sure you're okay, I pass out in your lap and you'd take off my helmet and pet my hair, telling me how well I did.... what then
Reblogging with a snippet because I can:
Alistair x f!Hawke | E | WC: 43,500 (Complete) | DA2, Act 3 | Second Chances | Assassination Plot | Grief | Hurt/Comfort | Fast Burn | Fereldan Politics | Exiled Alistair | Angst with a Happy Ending | Flangst
(from Chapter 2: The Bastard)
The whole world lurches. Alistair’s first conscious thought— a muddy question— is whether he’s shipboard during a gale. He’s afraid to confirm it, keeping his eyes welded shut, clinging to sleep for a moment longer.
Unfortunately, he has to take a piss.
He’s met with darkness when he cracks an eye, but knows his rented closet of a room well enough to fumble his way to the chamber pot. He reluctantly throws back the covers, his insides squirming with a truly singular intensity, and shuffles to the exact place the pot is. But the room keeps going.
“Huh.”
Alistair swats an arm out, searching for a wall, a bit of furniture, anything to orient his well-marinated mind. He finds what might be drapes though and gives them a tug, at least enough to let in a beam of searing moonlight. Wincing against it, he squints back into the room.
He’s in someone’s bed chamber, fancier than any room he’s seen in a spell. But a large elaborate vase reminds him of his rather urgent mission. Alistair beelines for it, braces himself against the wall behind it and relieves himself. He hangs there, his guts and brains competing at cartwheels. When he looks up he finds himself leaning against a large mirror.
It’s been a year at least since he’s last seen a decent one and probably for the best. He looks like wyvern shit. Beyond the angry shadows of a battered eye socket, one pupil is blown wide while the other resists, setting his vision askew. His stringy hair could use a wash or three and his beard is a bloody war crime.
Alistair claws together a few wits, enough to take stock of today’s predicament. The bed is mercifully empty. If he had managed to charm some misguided lady he’d like to remember it. At the moment most of the evening is clear as mud, but what he can remember is fairly typical: a scrubby tavern, cheap booze, and traded insults.
He plunks on the edge of the bed to dress himself startled to find his stained clothes neatly folded. He pulls on his breeches and then puzzles over the gaping tear in his tunic. It wouldn’t be the first shirt lost to tavern mischief, but he has precious few and they’re… not here. He balls it up and tosses it over his shoulder.
It can’t be later than four, not with this potent moonlight. When his stomach lurches, he contemplates poking at the back of his throat over that vase, but it rarely accomplishes what he hopes. There’s a hammer and anvil ringing in his ears and his mouth is fresh as a frowzy codpiece. Maybe whoever is hosting him has a bottle of something that’ll take the jagged edge off this hangover.
Lighting the lamp on the bedside table with a few shaky strokes, Alistair then ventures out into the home, shuffling shirtless and shoeless. Halfway to the opposite door the hallway opens into a vaulted mezzanine that overlooks a grand foyer. A dark mass is spread on the floor below and then sends him staggering back against the wall when it yips. Alistair freezes.
A mabari.
It’s been five years since he’s seen one. An unfamiliar mabari is a roll of the dice and he’d never quite been a natural with them. They could smell his uncertainty like an open wound, that’s what Ser Perth always told him. And since there was little to do about the uncertainty, he decided to have little to do with the dogs if he could help it. Mercifully, they gave him to the horsemaster.
Alistair slinks to the back of the house, as well as a man this groggy can anyway, searching for a pantry or a kitchen. If they’d put them in that swanky bedchamber, perhaps they wouldn’t begrudge him a snack.
The kitchen is cramped, hearth and larder and an enormous workbench practically piled on top of each other, little space for the elaborate feasts he’d seen prepared at Redcliffe. A window in the back bleeds moonlight and he peers out to see that the room presses up against a courtyard garden overtaken by polearms and practice dummies.
A half-eaten loaf of levain stares him down on the block beside a crock of butter. Nobody would miss stale bread. The stool beneath him is as sure-footed as he is, listing beneath his weight as he butters a hunk and scans the room for a nip of something potent to ease the bucking of his stomach.
“You look like death warmed up.”
If she weren’t so right, she might have startled him. A woman sways in the grip of his lingering intoxication, leaning against the doorframe with a pair of magnificent arms folded, frank gaze surveying him as she sucks on her teeth. Her dark hair hangs in limp curtains over a rumpled nightshift.
Doubt is his first reaction. He should be so lucky. And yet— he did wake up in someone else’s bed in his smalls.
“Forgive me my impertinence, but— who are you?” he asks, gesturing with the pilfered bread.
“Call me Hawke,” she says evenly. “I brought you home last night.”
Alistair nods like he remembers. “Did we—?”
Her doubtful look kicks him in the teeth. A brutal laugh escapes her. “No,” she says. “No, we did not.”
“Did you— want to?” he asks. He curses his impulse when she cocks her head with a pitying lift of her brow.
“Let’s just say I’ve seen better prospects at the pig farm.”
“Wow,” says Alistair. “I mean I know I’m no prize but wow.”
Her bulwark of an expression breaks, an unruly smile disappearing behind her hand as she scratches her nose. “Well. You stink like it anyway.”
Alistair takes a taunting bite of bread. “I can’t rightly argue.”
“Here,” she says, crossing the room to a cupboard and returning with a fiasco of Antivan wine along with a smaller medicinal bottle. She pours a half glass, adds a splash of the smaller bottle and then hands it to him expectantly.
“Hair of the dog,” she says. Alistair raises a brow, wondering what exactly he’s done to deserve such mothering.
“Thanks.” He takes a swig and promptly coughs, wine and whatever monstrosity she added misting the air. He holds the pungent mouthful of ruined wine with a questioning look.
“That’s a curative. Doesn’t go down easy but it works.”
Alistair chokes it back, wincing.
“What’s your name?” she asks, perching on the stool across from him, tearing her own bit of bread. Alistair averts his eyes from the sheer linen of her shift once he realizes how nicely she fills it. Hawke doesn’t seem the least bit concerned.
“I would have assumed you got that yesterday,” he says into his lap.
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Did you know that there are whipping posts in the Kirkwall Gallows?
They’re rather easy for players to miss. You can see them in the background during The Last Straw (Act 3), and as early as Act 1 (and continuing into Act 2), Circle mages can be heard complaining, “Don’t talk to me. The templars will give me thirty lashes if they see me speaking to a civilian.” During the quest A Noble Agenda (Act 3), a woman reports seeing a mage cousin “whipped, half-starving” while pleading for mercy from a literal “death squad.”
In-universe, however, the whippings in the Gallows appear to be common knowledge. During Repentance (Act 2), we can see a whipping post (the exact same model observed in the Gallows later on) being used for sexual roleplay in the Harimann Estate in Hightown.
Lord Harimann: Now, you be the naughty apprentice, and I’ll be the Templar torturer.
It’s Played For Laughs here of course, but it really says something that citizens of Kirkwall know about Templar abuses in the Gallows and just how awful conditions are there — including the use of whipping posts. This isn’t even the only instance in the game of random NPCs referring to the severity of the repression and the rampant cruelty.
