Conspiracy Aydenne by @blackwall-my-tiny-husband Ancient Millenial; she/they genjyosgirl on AO3 + Bioware made me do it + forever a Gensomaden Saiyuki fan
Looking for my Saiyuki posts? Saiyuki my beloved tag here
My Dragon Age Stories
Hi friends! Time for a new pinned intro to my stuff because it's all a little messy. I currently have four series running for Dragon Age (Veilguard) and I'll introduce below the cut! All my stories live on AO3.
My main Rook is Xiqaa Laidir (elf Lord of Fortune, they/she, Lucanis + Emmrich romance) Profile here | Xiqaa Art roundup here
Aydenne de Riva is an AU Rook but he might see some canon action is also in my canon stories! Profile here | Aydenne art roundup here
Series + tag links:
Curious? Start with this character and motif write-up: Threads and Themes post about my VG canon Rook (Xiqaa), Lucanis, Emmrich and Spite
Or this self-rec! about some of my favorite writing, by me.
In Shadow, We're All Grey (series on AO3)
This series is my third in my Veilguard canon. The stories will primarily focus on Aydenne de Riva (now Dellamorte) and his complicated romance with Illario (formerly) Dellamorte. Larger world events are taking place as well, like the growth of his House under his leadership, and trouble is brewing in Antiva.
Tell Me Tuesday about the story so far June 2026
In Shadow tag (Tumblr posts)
WIP tag for In Shadow
It's Still You (longfic complete! series on AO3)
Post canon, This series tells continued story of Xiqaa Rook Laidir, Lucanis Dellamorte and his Spite demon, and Emmrich Volkarin.Â
It's Still You tag
Playlist on YT Spotify
Despite Everything (longfic complete! series on A03)
Set during the events of Dragon Age the Veilguard, this series explores the roots of the relationship between Xiqaa Laidir (Rook) and Lucanis Dellamorte and Emmrich Volkarin
Despite Everything tag
Playlist on YT Spotify
The CROWS of A.N.T.I.V.A. (ongoing series on AO3)
Viago de Riva (and now Aydenne "Rook" de Riva and his friends) gaslight, girlboss, and get loved while attempting to maintain their sanity as employees in a corporatized world.
We've got everything from Iron Bull as Pitbull to a magical self-witnessing legal pen alongside a super sized helping of the absurd and illogical. This is crack treated oh so seriously but there are no rules. You just never know what might happen in the next episode.
CROWS tag
#Advanced Negotiation & Tactical International Vacancy Alignment (secondary silliness tag)
In Shadow, We're All Grey
Illario stays with the Shadows, in an indefinable relationship with Zevran. Lucanis buys a tavern on the new Lordsâ territory and takes contracts when he chooses. Xiqaa divides their time between the Lords of Fortune and running the Keep. Emmrich retires halfway, growing alchemical plants, helping Xiqaa and teaching in the Necropolis.
Aydenne returns to House Dellamorte, determined to do credit to his new house and life...while we look toward his future and fill in his past, with and without Illario.
**I can't really share oneshots from this series because they're all oneshots lol but the link will take you to the series A03 page and there's also a spoiler writeup of the whole canon so far.**
It's Still You
Continuing the adventures of Emmrich, Xiqaa, Lucanis and Spite.
In the aftermath of the Evanuris War, Xiqaa decides the most reasonable course of action is to petition for Illarioâs release from prison into their custody. Lucanis hates this immediately, and spirals about it. Emmrich hates it more quietly, but because he just wants to retire quietly with his lovers. After speaking with Caterina about a way to get Illario out of prison, Xiqaa ends up contractâbound to Illario for one year, responsible for his good behavior. Everyone pretends this is a workable arrangement.
I'm up to 18 oneshots in this timeline, so if you're looking for something short to read to introduce yourself to my characters, I invite you to click on the link and choose any story that's not "It's Still You" from the series. They're in chronological order, with the longfic somewhere toward the top!
Despite Everything
A longfic of missing scenes and love stories from the Veilguard. Emmrookanis (and Spite) with alternating POVs, mostly Rook and Lucanis. Complete, 103k words. Rated M (it's pretty much for two chapters)
There are other oneshots in this series, I don't have a lot of plans to return to this timeline but I'm pretty random so it's still open. Mostly fluff rated T. Spite is romantically interested in both Rook and Emmrich and participates in most everything in some way.
This is the first day of my life - Emmcanis
Solstice - Rookanis
Rook Captures King; Checkmate - Rookanis
The Rook Who Murdered Dinner - Rookanis
All of It and More - Rook/Spite (spiritually), gen
Sweet Dream - Spite POV, gen
Spite. (Determination.) - Spite POV, gen
Thoughts on Breaking (the Rules) - Spite POV, gen
Spite's Shenanigans (series)
(thanks @gatesofminrathous for the meme)
Humor and fluff about Spite (and often Manfred) learning to live in the mortal realm
Needs Salt
Textures
The List belongs here as well.
The CROWS of A.N.T.I.V.A. (series)
This is a pure crack fic and I refuse to be sorry. Viago de Riva is a spreadsheet girly who runs his department with an iron fist and a judgy attitude until the Rookie, Aydenne de Riva, gets hired to disrupt his life. Corporate nonsense turned up to 11. Feat. unexpected Illarook romance and much Teiago.
Internal Compliance
Interview Notes
La Piazza
Concert
Pre-Meeting
Concert
Coffee Break
Beach
All Hands Planning
Viago's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (feat. Isadora de Riva)
Drive Me, Crazy
Inquiry (side story! - Rookanis ft. Xiqaa Laidir)
Risotto (Xicanis pt. 2)
A Side of Dread, Please (feat. Xicanis)
Birthday Party (Xicanis pt. 3)
Sick Day (Aydenne x Illario)
Mandatum Inevitabile (feat. Gemma de Riva)
Cake Crimes and Pizza Parties (Aydenne's birthday celebration!)
Unrelated to my Canon (Everything else DA)
Ashes - Lucanis turns away from Rook after Treviso is blighted.
Rival Mine - Lucanis/Viago relationship I feel is an offshoot of Ashes Lucanis.
the perfect crow was never born - I like to think this is the same Lucanis as in Ashes. Spite/Lucanis introspective.
Echo - M!Rook/Davrin discover the well in the Hossberg Wetlands.
I do take asks and I have some tagged as "ask game" so feel free, my asks are always open.
If you want to talk about any of my other fandoms I'm ALWAYS down for that too.
There are the obvious: stealth and acrobatics, poison and infiltration.Â
Combat.
There are also the flashy trappings tied into the mask. Dress and wit and a sense of the dramatic. Making themselves into the stuff of poetry and song.
As well, less glamorous and lesser known necessities. Contract negotiations, intelligence gathering, book keeping. Rehabilitation after inevitable injury. Maintaining contacts. The endless minutiae of caring for one's gear.
Finally, the near intangible, undefinable, learned only through living it pilings under the big picture. All the myriad politics of being a sanctioned killer, beholden to and holding a blade to Antivan society.
It is exhausting and all encompassing and no wonder so many fledglings do not survive to even try at their first contract.
Leonor is not a Crow, but she lives in their shadow. The quiet support of domestic staff, keeping the overworked and overwrought children of House Dellamorte fed so they might meet their Talonâs exacting standards. She has been with the family for years, through wax and wane and loss, and as such is allowed a great deal of command within the walls of the Villaâs kitchens. There are exceptions, of course - starvation training and specific flavors for practice with poisons - but so long as Lady Dellamorteâs meals are to her liking and her grandchildren are ready for their endless training, no one questions Leonor allowing them an occasional indulgence. Arroz con leche. Flan.
A cup of cioccolata calda with fresh churros.Â
Illario recognizes the treats for the gray area offering they are. He delights in the forbidden aspect of it, cajoling his cousin to keep it hidden when Dolara enters the room to refill glasses or Rocco appears to build up the fire, though Leonor knows perfectly well neither will question the children of the house being treated like actual children for the brief moments she has them at her table.
Lucanis is harder to read, his words tightly held but his plate as clean as Illarioâs when the meal ends.
It is sometime later when he approaches her, serious with silent steps and a single request.
Can you teach me?
The expectations placed on a Crow are legion. The lessons endless. The obligations on the children of House Dellamorte strict even by the standards of their peers. Leonor knows Lucanis does not have time to indulge in hobbies, to learn a skill that Antivan society would deem beneath him. Even if he manages to eke out some sliver of freedom he should be polishing the expected undertakings of the nobility - horses and wine and games of chance and business, interests that will be expected by Lord Dellamorteâs social circle someday, not doing servantâs work.
But she can see he is serious. Determined. And the kitchen is her domain.
Perhaps a lesson chosen will be a reprieve of sorts. Not exactly a break, but close enough by Crow standards. She hands Lucanis an apron and gestures for him to grab a stool and he doesn't exactly smile, but she doesn't think she has ever seen him so excited about a lesson and that erases all doubt about honoring his request.
They get to work.
Thank you @datvcompanionweeks for hosting đ
Amazing Lucanis border by @gutz-ingellvar đ
Tag Note: This week is going to be a lot. Tagging so folks who have expressed they are good with such things can keep tabs and loop over when and if they want - no pressure, no obligation. I absolutely understand if folks don't want to be tagged with everything this week too so just let me know if that is the case. đ (also this is pretty much the tag list for rook week stuff + some additional Lucanis/Rookanis folks đ Please tag me in anything you all do if I don't catch it!)
I'm instituting a new policy of "if I can't easily read your crusty scanned PDF then I'm sending it back to you, telling you to get your shit together and save your .docx as .pdf, and causing snakes to manifest inside your house"
this but also if you are in accounting and you have an Excel file please do not save it as a PDF or take a screenshot of it and then paste it into another Excel file
Good afternoon to everyone in the notes having a horrible time! Y'all are fighting demons I never knew existed!! I think every person that makes you do stupid time wasting shit like this because they refuse to learn basic computer literacy should be fired!!
An Aydenne & Zalan fic set after the events of Black Hellebore and before Three of Crows
Inspired by kiss week day 6: Mourning but incredibly late so for funsies instead
Snippet below and Read the whole thing on AO3 HERE
Aydenne belongs to @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai
âââââ ââ ââ â âââââ
But he looked like the walking undead now. Zalan mulled over his choices. He'd been forced away several times now for contracts and each time he'd come back Aydenne looked worse. He had to do something before going out again. And he didn't think trying to pull him up the mountainside for a quiet night with or without the other de Riva's would be enough this time.
Sliding off his spot in the window he walked around to the side of the desk, getting into Aydenne's space. "Ayde, you need to talk about⊠this." He gestured to the desk and the papers and the stale piece of bread left forgotten on the table since this morning.
"Talk about what? It's fine, Zalan." Aydenne smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, it barely even looked like a passable smile. A ghost of an emotion to try and get Zalan to leave him alone. The second he looked away, and Aydenne did try to look away immediately, his face fell into the empty shell it had been for weeks.
I'm opening my commissions for October 2026 onward!
Fantasy illustration, fic covers, character art, Dragon Age OCs, D&D. I would love to draw your blorbos in any and all scenarios. I offer a discount on additional characters if they are pre-existing in media (eg, Dragon Age NPC).
I'm a huge nerd and before I ever knew to make a Tumblr account or make fanart or find my people, I stayed up really late on my phone one night after finishing Veilguard and wrote this.
I wrote it for people who hadn't played the game, or didn't know it, so it's not pitched at Tumblr exactly. And other people have made some of these points better, or differently, and I just hadn't read them yet. But I still kinda look at this first impression and... like it. <3
A bit of old art added just because.
___
If you go online and look at Steam or Reddit reviews for âDragon Age: The Veilguard,â youâll see a collection of angry red thumbs and arrows pointing downward. Critiques range from âbad writingâ to âflat voice actingâ to various complaints about combat mechanics and narrative pacing. This is all despite the fact that the game has received quite a lot of critical acclaim; the game is beautiful, fully finished, and visually polished. Complaints instead tend to center around the idea that Veilguard is a âFrankensteinâ game, a sad cobbled-together shadow of what might have been, and a disappointing end to 15 years of fandom (the first game in the series was released in 2009).
But I suspect DAtV also disappointed these fans for another reason. The game is a coherent, sustained critique of the âlone wolfâ hero, a stubborn (often cis, white, male) character determined to save the world at any cost. Your character Rook begins as a sort of bit player in a team, helping Varric (a much-loved companion from DA2 and DA: Inquisition) to try to knock some sense into the tormented elven god Solas. Also known as FenâHarel, the Dread Wolf, Solas is another returning figure who holds himself responsible for the fall of the elvhen people. To fix his mistakes, heâs concluded that he has to end the world â even if it means stabbing his friends in the back (or chest), which he immediately does when Rook, Varric, and their team finally reach him.
Without giving away too much of the story that follows, Veilguard lets you know from the beginning â as your anxious Rook attempts to shoulder Varricâs responsibilities while he recovers from his wounds â that no one can save the world alone. Youâre just not that special. Instead, Rook must gather a team of companions, each affiliated with a larger group or faction, and together prepare those factions to fight for Thedas. The companion quests for DAtV are longer and more complex than in previous games, and each person has an internal struggle that can be resolved in several different ways. Yet unlike previous games, these companion quests link into the larger fates of the factions theyâre affiliated with, and are more closely tied to the final outcome of the game.
Take the noir detective Neve Gallus, for example. Neve loves the Tevinter city of Minrathous â and demands that we see what she sees, even though previous games, set in Southern Thedas, have mainly depicted Tevinter as a world of toxic blood magic and poisoned politics. A society founded on slave labor and oligarchy is a world with an underbelly â and this is Neveâs home, in Dock Town, where she attempts to advocate for the people who canât fight for themselves. Neve is a cynic with a soft heart, gentle to the weak and scathingly sarcastic to everyone else. Her character struggles with the problem of proof: when people can disappear in the night, or politicians can pay to erase an embarrassment, how do you know what really happened? How can you believe in, or build, a future that is so easily swept away? She canât give up, but she canât win either.
Neve will have to choose between fighting dirty or stepping out of the shadows, and Rook can help her make that choice. But other companions face other hard questions: do we honor the traditions of our forebears, even when they stifle our freedom, as the Qunari Taash (a nonbinary child of immigrants) must decide? Or, as the necromancer Emmrich Volkarin wonders, should we prevent our own death at the cost of building a legacy we trust will live beyond us? Some companions are written more surprisingly than others, and there are plenty of classic high fantasy RPG tropes for those who love that vibe: dungeons and dragons, literally and abundantly. But ultimately these companion storylines are central to the main storyline because Veilguard asks you to love the world you are saving: to explore its gorgeous nooks and crannies, the intricacies of Antivan alleyways and the high crumbling arches of Arlathan.
DAtV also insists that you recognize your priorities arenât everyoneâs priorities. The world of the Veilguard is complex and diverse, and even players who create a human, white, straight, cisgender Rook will be forced to encounter (and be relatively polite to) people of different cultures, races, classes, and genders. As a queer woman, Iâll admit I love this. But to those who found it uncomfortable, Iâll say: your discomfort is essential to the point being made. To get on with the business of fighting bad guys, Rook must first consider the needs of other people, who may or may not have the same values.
Now, whether Rook meets those needs or not is an open question. It is completely possible to get to the end of the game without resolving a single companionâs problems, strengthening a single faction, or understanding anything about the Dread Wolfâs history. But Solas is at the heart of the story, and Rook is his foil at every turn. Solas uses people as tools for his own ends, certain he knows how the story should play out. Rook can use people, or support them; learn their stories, or ignore them completely. Solas has been a hero, but the root of his current villainy comes from the belief that only he can save the world. And Rook is faced with the same question: does victory mean sacrificing everything, and everyone (âwhatever it takesâ is a recurring phrase)? Or can we win by supporting and building each other up?
Veilguardâs third act is a fast-paced, sometimes painful revelation of how these choices play out. You canât get through the story without some loss, and not everyone will be saved, no matter what the player decides. But version of the story where everything is lost is the version in which Rook makes the same choices Solas did: to ignore the voices of friends, to skip the difficult work of rebuilding communities, and to believe that they alone can save the world. Thereâs plenty of darkness here, which is part of what I find perplexing about the critique that âVeilguard forgot the DA franchise is dark fantasy.â Is forcing the last of a nearly-extinct species to fight for the masters who nearly destroyed them not dark? Is watching your last living companion shatter into shards of blighted stone as the direct result of your choices not dark?
And yet: maybe darkness isnât the problem.
In Veilguard, the world isnât shaped by every choice you made in every past game. NPCs arenât there to praise the âHero of Ferelden,â or make the player feel proud of their god-like history of shaping Thedas (again, another nod to Solas). In a very real way, the people of northern Thedas donât care what you or any other player has done in the past 15 years. Helping them requires listening to them talk about themselves: what theyâre scared of, what theyâve seen, what might be coming. Theyâre people, not fans or easter eggs. To really win, Rook needs a lot of other people.
I think this is the disappointment the angry red thumbs of Steam and Reddit canât quite articulate. Veilguard wonât let you pretend youâre the only person with a story. To come out the other side with friends who love you and a world that can rebuild, you must spend time getting to know those people, those places, and those struggles. You canât âgo it aloneâ without going the same way as Solas: dismissing the people you never really saw, telling yourself their sacrifices were the only way the story could have played out. Thereâs no way to get the cheering crowds and the tender, loyal romance â the positive regard of your community â without first investing in their dreams, their struggles, and (yes) their petty side-quests.
You can save the world with or without the people in it. But without them, thereâs not much left to save.
Once again a bit late but I am back with my favorite mage for @dorianweek
Day 5 â Letters and Keepsakes
My boys miss each other so much, so Corellion writes whole essays just to hear Dorian smile and tease him later when they talk. Dorian has a strand of Corellion's hair braided in his, something about an elven tradition of keeping one's heart safe
pov. your (pathetic almost ex)boyfriend Illario Dellamorte YET AGAIN forgot about your bday and improvised this last minute, because he's convinced that he is the best thing that ever happen to you
Thanks for the tags @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai and @thiamilano! This was a fun Friday morning distraction from work!
Get a screenshot of your OC's eye color and surround it with 8 things that are of the same color.
I did more than 8 đ
So Maribel has eyes that are tricky to pin down entirely, because they can be quite different depending on the light (and don't even get me started on makeup), hence the three damn screenshots I included! More than anything else, they remind me of a stormy sea, and all the colors that can contain. But I tried to pick some other fun things too! I LOVE celestite and aquamarine, and they fit the bill perfectly too!
Gentle-est of tags to @notyourmamasdeerbat, @rosha84, @bigshrimp365, @vixenofcadmea, @gatesofminrathous, @ripzaraschips, @eiluned and anyone else that might want to play!
Lucanis introducing Emmrich to his sweet snake, Noodle. (She will eventually be mentioned in my emmcanis au fic that the first chapter of, will hopefully be posted soon. đ€)
Emmrich has some very strong opinions.
My own made-up Thedas snake lore:
Noodle is a Wyvern Snake. They are rear fanged and not typically a threat, but if you if get bitten, you will get high as a kite. Therefore, the species is sought after for those specific poison properties. Viago was interested, but then she wouldn't let him milk her fangs. Only Lucanis can and he will keep the trick to keep her docile to himself. Viago can go on thinking she hates him.
This and the rest of the week will also be in the ao3 collection or you can find this piece HERE.
