⟡ 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐈: 𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐬 - Rook & Inquisiton, Rook & Crows, mult Inner Circle pairings (Rated E)
Prequel, from Trespasser DLC up to Veilguard - Solara Lavellan is a Child of the Inquisition, a Child of the Fade, and a Child of the Dread Wolf. The world grows dark as Solas prepares for his final act of rebellion, and Solara is shuffled to where she'd be safest.
When Ferelden recognizes a new sovereign, the Chantry bells ring throughout all of Southern Thedas. Deep in the Brecilian Forest, however, Hollix of Lothering and his Merry Men are none too keen to share in the revelry.
Inspired by The Adventures of Robin Hood, this retelling of a band of merry men, unlikely heroes of Thedas, is structured in an anthological, mostly linear format.
When Ostwick is razed by Darkspawn, Henry survives only through the Grey Wardens' Joining. As the Free Marches buckle beneath the first stirrings of a Blight, he finds himself caught between duty, grief, and a future that suddenly seems much shorter than he imagined. And in searching for those things worth living for, Henry never thought he would also find someone worth dying for.
Family Nobility dinner between the Kobylas and Capons
Radzig : So, Sir Hans, I believe I should be thanking you. Henry told me you’ve been tutoring him in Greek, in addition to Latin, during your free time.
Hanush : That’s the least he can do. He’s got nothing but free time.
Hans : Right, thanks uncle. And I appreciate your kind words, sir Radzig, but I can’t take all the credit. Henry is the one who came to me for learning. And he’s made quite a lot of progress already under my care. Right, Hal ?
Henry : Oh- right ! Quite, sir Hans, thank you. I’ve learned more with his help than with any book on the matter so far. (Grinning) Why, just the other day, he called me his "Philtatos" ! It means "best of warriors".
Hans : *desperately chocking on wine*
Radzig :
Hanush :
Henry : … what ? Did I say it wrong ?
Radzig : On the contrary, son… you’ve pronounced it all with utmost clarity.
Hanush : *silently racking his brains to remember what "Philtatos" means*
The Deep Roads is one of the heaviest environments for me in any Dragon Age game, and I decided that this is where Hans's claustrophobia begins. So as a little treat (because I am also irl claustrophobic), I gave him a little tiny dream sequence.
(chapters 1-15 on ao3)
He was on his side. On his back. He was uncertain of how he was lying, because everything around him was heavy and all-encompassing.
Too heavy. Constricting and confining and crushing.
He was being consumed. Swallowed whole.
This was what it felt like to drown.
Mind your manners while we’re gone, little dove, his mother’s gentle voice hummed into his hair. Her long curls were managed into a long braid, pinned between her and Hans as he held her tightly around her waist and buried himself into her warm embrace.
She was the color of marigolds in Bloomingtide, of new beeswax candles. Of the golden sparkles on the Minanter when the sun shone the brightest.
She was why he loved yellow so dearly–why he coveted it still. For there was no eagle, no lion, who could claim such a courageous color, such a noble color, the way his mother could. Her heart was far too big and her goodness far too endless for any fair competition.
He held her tighter, his small, fragile arms keeping her like a glass cage, and he buried deeper still, into the bodice of her elegant kirtle, a dozen shades of ochre, that he might dig deep enough for her to have no choice but to bring him along.
He heard her hum in practiced patience, kissing the top of his head and stroking his blonde hair with a gloved hand. It’s only for a few days, Hans. No longer than last time.
Hans wanted to argue with her. She always said that, but sometimes they were one day later than promised. Sometimes two. It was never her fault; the weather was poor, or Father’s duties took longer than expected. But it never stopped him from acting very cross with her on her return, at least until she’d produce a trinket or book she’d brought back for him to smooth the weak edges of his anger.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the enormous effort it took to draw a breath rattled him from the comfort of his mother’s soft belly–his very first home. Muffled, muddled, the sound of his father’s voice, a loon’s hail across a lake, called for his wife to join him.
He remembered this moment. He’d relived it a hundred times since. She would slip away, order a nurse to tend to him while she departed in a wisp of skirts and satin and sunshine-gold like blossoms in the last lingering days before the fall.
Hans prepared himself to cry, but stopped when the arms around him, instead of releasing him, only squeezed tighter.
He relished it. Perhaps Andraste saw that he had suffered long enough with this recurring nightmare and was relieving him of it once and for all. This time, she could stay. This time, the river would not claim her.
His small body, so new to the world even at nine, grew in size, until his cheek was pressed to her heart, its drumbeat a rhythm he’d long since forgotten. And then further still, to the hollow of her neck, where all of his favorite songs and stories were born. And finally, until she was nestled against him, tucked beneath his chin but still as fiercely protective as the day he fit in the crook of her elbow.
tagging @thedarkirishsilence @mirufiyu and @katharinas-art-blog if you'd like to partake this week!!
Henry was as old as Thedas itself, seated in the body of a displaced peasant boy from a ramshackle seaside village, and in that in-between of callow and ancient, the timelessness of him against the endless reach of land and sky was utterly disarming.
@freerangesoup you never cease to amaze me. Dragon Age tarot-inspired Grey Warden Henry and his Ansburg lord? Are you kiddddddiiiiinnnngggg meeee. ❤️❤️❤️ Thank you so so so much for this BEAUTIFUL work of art.
“That's why they hate us... that's why they need us. That's why they take us.... that's why they feed us. But the true abomination... is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed.” - Hespith, Dragon Age: Origins
Orzammarian and Wardens in tow, the Demon's Pack journey into the Deep Mines to slay the Elven broodmother.
(Rating: E, Hans/Henry, DA Deep Roads/broodmother lore, blood & gore)
-x-
First day, they come and catch everyone...
Even in no man’s land, outside the metes and bounds laid out by lord and sovereign, there were rules for making camp. Bury your embers. Piss downstream. The most obvious to Hans was that the distance between strangers’ camps should be greater than a bowshot.
He stared at the dilapidated entrance to old ruins, ancient and Elvhen, close enough that he could throw a stone at the exposed foundation. More unnerving was the fact that, if he stood and positioned himself just right, he could make the shot into the half-hidden mine shaft tucked beneath crumbling rock and bronze-plated pillars. Maker only knew how many camps lay lurking just beneath the surface.
Their firelight was stretched thin, and spindly shadows yawned and licked across the site to pour into the cavern. The dark shapes flickered and bent, mocking Hans, mocking all of them–dare you to jump.
A whining snout pushed into the side of his leg, and he absentmindedly reached over to scratch Mutt’s ears, in the spot he enjoyed enough that eventually, the whines would be reduced to anxious teeth snaps and jowl flutters.
I know your name 'cause it's ringing in my head forever
Sometimes it's like the only thing I hear.
A continuation of the voyeurism scene in Chapter 13 of Blue Skies, Green Grass, and You, where Henry spies on a stolen moment between John and Sam.
(Rating: E, 2.8k words, KCD/DA x-over, Jamuel smut, Andrastian symbolism)
-x-
"Vhenan? What is it?" Samuel swallows, making a painstaking attempt to keep his breathing in check. It is dangerous how easily John's presence could spin him out of sorts. Even more risky is how dizzying his absence leaves him. Like a falcon, talon-bound and spiraling with his equal in the air, plummeting to the earth, knowing that upon release, they'd both rely on centripetal force to keep them in each other's orbit.
John had heard something outside–a voice he swore was that of a lord's, and a name he swore was that of a Warden's. Braies modestly gathered against him, John walks to the door to investigate, and Sam, without his anchor, without his love, sags back into the empty space. He’d been held against the table’s edge and was now bearing his weight onto the top of it with slightly curved palms, fingertips pressing hard into the rough grain of the wood.
He stares at the brightening half-moons of his nail beds as he leans on locked elbows. His jaw clicks tight, back teeth trembling from their brace. He inhales sharply through his nose—
"Sam."
The sound of his name fills the aravel like the rush of fresh mana after consuming a lyrium potion. It grounds and liberates and gives Sam such a feeling of immortality and freedom, knowing that he would still fall upon a blade at the first threat to John's life. He’d bind himself to John in lacelike vows, a gossamer marriage, delicate and indomitable. He’d drag himself down to the bottom of all things because he knows that all John will do for the rest of their lives is lift him high enough to soar.
"It must have been the wind carrying conversations from the fire," John's voice reasons, closer now, halfway returned from the door that feels a million miles away.
He is so oblivious to his own power, Sam thinks as his eyes flutter closed and he flattens his palms against the grain of the table. "But I heard it too, and my hearing is keener," he argues, his voice shaking and husky with trapped arousal.
John's breath licks the shell of his ear, and Sam instinctively settles into his lover in a desperate reunion. "There is no one," the voice purrs, soft and honey-sweet, the tip of John’s tongue teasing a stripe up to the summit of Sam’s ear before gently biting down.
It rips a moan straight from Sam's very spirit; John’s ability to break a man was always stronger than any magic. He swears that the man is a blood mage in disguise, despite John once saying that he'd be the first person in the history of Thedas to hex himself if left alone with a staff. But Sam isn’t so sure; the way he can pry anything he wants from a man–secrets, confessions, seed–speaks to ancient, innate mastery.
"There is you," Sam defends, fighting for John to give himself credit. The man is no soldier in the traditional sense, but he'd raze nations for those he loves the most. One thing John will not do, however, is acknowledge his own importance in the lives of those who love him with the same ferocity. Frustrated at this, Sam reaches behind him to bat at the hand still holding up the braies. With a patient laugh, John lets the loosened garments fall, and they pool over his knees.
His fingers—tendrils, John would say, when he would admire Sam's spell-weaving—curl around the exposed erection, and he tugs on it like a leash. John gasps in surprise as he is forced forward, and Sam hums in satisfaction. "There is this cock," he continues, pumping the length in one single, gratuitous motion before he turns around in his arms. His hands slide around John's hips to knead into his backside like a daydreaming cat basking in the sun.
In a way, that is what John is to him. He is the very object that all things revolve around. Sam, his moon, considers himself lucky to catch fleeting moments of his warmth, coveting every single eclipse like it is life essence.
He would beg for more of that light, and he drops to his knees because there is no other choice, because he could choose. "There is this spirit," he murmurs against the lean valley dividing his abdomen and the soft, fine hairs that dampen under his hot breath. If he could, he'd call upon June, the god of his vallaslin, to craft a tool that could pierce John's flesh without causing harm, so that he might burrow inside and kiss all of the untouchable parts of him.
As if knowing Sam's very wish, he feels John's hand brush along the fern-shaped mark stretching up his cheek, his thumb so gentle as it caresses in slow, sweeping lines. He looks up at him, his hazel eyes shimmering in the candlelight and so full of fondness that Sam can only turn into his palm and press a slow, intentional kiss into it.
Tagged by @night-scare - go read her Leon Kennedy fic!!
This next chapter is... gonna be a doozy. Hansry & The Demon's Pack hunt for the missing Lavellan. This is literally all I have written so far because, well, *gestures all around broodmother lore*.
tagging @gatesofminrathous and @thedarkirishsilence!!
a little snippet of the next chapter i am feverishly working on getting done by the end of the week before i go on vacation. ada wong mention??? surely means nothing :))
tagging: @falonwithbenefits @thedarkirishsilence and @caytopia 'cause i know y'all are cooking some stuff up <3
Adder sits in a jail cell and waits for death, because no one is coming to save him.
(Rating: E, Adder/Janosh, DA Dwarven lore, blood & gore, eventual hurt/comfort)
-x-
“Janosh!” There was a sharp whistle after the shout of his name, and both men looked towards the summons before unfolding themselves to stand upright. A mountain of a Qunari waved for him, his arm resembling a large, grey tree trunk. “We’re riding out!” He wore an eyepatch, but the exposed one studied Adder for a moment before flicking expectantly to Janosh.
“Agh, boss says time to go? Time to go.” The moustache couldn’t hide the little disappointed pout, and it could almost be considered cute if it wasn’t on such an ugly mug.
Adder glanced past Janosh to the Qunari. “Riding out. Not sailing?” he asked.
Janosh shook his head. “We take jobs, make coin, then cross sea to do same in Ferelden.”
Adder nodded, reckoning with the off-putting sadness he was feeling. He was beginning to like his company. He begrudgingly handed him the bottle.
Janosh sounded truly upset at the notion and pushed it back so it tinked against the metal pieces in Adder’s gambeson. “Keep it. Your consolation prize, not mine.” He bowed his head and took a few steps back before turning around completely.
Adder gave it a slow turn in his hand.
“Hey!”
He hardly had time to react when he saw a small object launch toward him. He snapped his fingers around it with a thief’s precision and opened his hand to stare down at the cork. When he looked back to Janosh, the mage was grinning.
“Raincheck for meal, eh? I make you something life-changing.”
Adder rubbed his thumb over the worn cork before pocketing it. “I hold you to it, Janosh of Rivain.”
The quickly-made plans seemed to please him past the point of elation, until there wasn’t a part of him that could be considered the least bit ugly. He offered a half-wave, a shy sort of thing that seemed more hopeful than anything else, and Adder returned it in kind.
Janosh, he thought, once he was truly alone. He made the shape of his name without speaking it, then said it in a whisper. It’d been a long time since he’d willingly spoke a language other than his native one. He decided in the next slow sip of gifted, stolen whiskey that he rather liked this particular word.
I’ve seen a lot of depictions of Henry and Hans parting ways post kcd2 because they were cautious, or most often found out by someone. And Henry is always the reasonable one to pull away and ride in the horizon despite Hans pleading him to stay.
And I get the vision. I truly do. But I can’t really see it.
Henry is canonically and very obviously shown and told to be a little shit who does whatever he wants, and stops at nothing to get it. This guy cuts in on conversations between Von Bergow and Hans to add (relevant but still) details about their intentions, even though he’s seen as a lowly servant at Trosky, he still steps forward like he owns the place. In front of Von Bergow. He talks back to Radzig (about being abandoned, understandable) and Hanush ("if he doesn’t want to get married, you can’t force him to, right ?") without a care in the world, and can look the Margrave in the eye and lie to him without blinking.
The thing is, Henry is just sensible and lucky enough to not get caught and get himself killed when on his own. In unknown territory and left alone at the pillory, the best plan was to befriend the locals and get a steady job and place to sleep. But when Hans is involved, most of Henry’s good sense vanishes into thin air. Bursting into a camp of armed cumans after one sword training. Stepping between Hans and ten men armed with crossbows. Infiltrating a highly secured fortress while knowing that Hans’ life isn’t technically in any danger. When Hans is involved, Henry becomes just as reckless - not to say twice as reckless - as him.
All this to say, even if they’re discovered in Rattay, I think Henry would find a way to stay. And not just because he wants to for himself - because Hans would be just as opposed to the idea as him. They have each other’s backs through and through. Henry would find a way to blackmail the person who threatens him, make a deal or send them away. He would get his results one way or another.
Next chapter is another POV change, this time our baby boy Adder! Our ex-Carta Orzammarian. This is when he meets Janosh for the second time, six months after their first accidental run-in.
