thank you for the tag @softeasun!! ur leandra posting today inspired me (':
She feels stupid most of the time. She feels stupid when Bethany asks her about magic, when Malcolm tries to explain Bethany's question to her later and Leandra understands maybe half of what their nine-year-old has grasped. She feels stupid when Malcolm mentions all the books she hasn't read, when he ponders a theory like he's back in the Circle, when he was studying and she was sneaking out to the coast to swim. She feels stupid when her yarn snarls, when her laundry falls off the line into the river, and all the other wives look at her like she's a helpless child. She feels stupid when she and her husband reach for each other like hotheaded teenagers who can't control themselves, when she says for weeks, I'll just make some pennyroyal tea, Malcolm, it's fine, and then she forgets, and now here they are, having to go hat in hand to Elder Miriam because she's behaved like consequences wouldn't follow actions.
no pressure tagging @thewardenisonthecase @kathaliabloodyrose @rsenak
Replayed the A Tale of Orzammar dlc to try out a mod, and im biased cause I love all things related to dwarves, but I really like how it acts as basically a prologue to the dwarf noble origin.
"Hi, im a noble from a lower house who needs you to go plant a secret in an abandoned thaig"
Frandlin Ivo, who is one of the characters of noble dwarf origin, and our first hint that this isnt just some low noble hiring us. "No, I can't leave Prince Bhe... I mean, the noble from the lower house that hire me unsupervised"
Then you make your way to the abandoned Aeducan thaig, clearing the way of all the darkspawn, deepstalkers and giant spiders you encounter, and Bhelen comes up right after you, and in true Bhelen fashion, backstabs you, revealing his plan was to plant the Aeducan shield that Trian and the dwarf noble "find" during the dwarf noble origin story. Playing as a dwarf casteless added this extra dialogue from Bhelen.
and probably reading too much into it, but the fact that the dwarf commoner here also has the name Brosca (my hc is that theyre a surfacer stepbrother/stepsister from the dad's side) makes it very funny to me that this family of casteless is what allows his rise to power and to eventually become king (if the dwarf commoner supports him)
And here you have a couple of options. You can fight and die as Bhelen calls more soldiers, or you can defeat Bhelen in the fight and make a deal with him to leave to the surface and never return.
Overall its very interesting nice piece of dlc, and its more content about the dwarves, so I like it for that alone.
imagine you're in your early 20s AT MOST and you're pregnant and not by the guy your parents have been prepping you to marry since you were ELEVEN YEARS OLD. imagine you do your best to conceal the pregnancy but you're surrounded by ppl monitoring you p much 24/7, ppl who will notice if you're sick or tired or weepy or no longer having menstrual cycles — and then they do find out and they gossip abt it indiscreetly enough that your mother finds out, and your mother just absolutely fucking loses it. and you confess everything!! you lay it all out and say pls help me i'm so scared!! and your parents respond by sending ppl to arrest (and worse!) the guy you love, and the last thing you hear from that guy is 'hey don't worry i've got this when at some point i return we'll leave the only home you've ever known forever!'
now imagine that for as long as that takes, your parents are pulling out all the stops to coerce you into lying abt your child's parentage and marrying the guy they picked out for you. btw you're 'a disgrace!' and also you're never leaving the house again! and your mother just stops speaking to you, and you have no idea if the men your father sent after the man you love, who is the father of your apparently extremely wanted child, captured him, if this is just your life now.
now imagine the guy DOES show up, and he's ready to go, and your dad says okay choose between him and us, forget all of the screaming and threats of imprisonment and the disgrace thing and how you've ruined your life and our lives, too. don't worry, we changed our minds. you don't have to marry that guy we picked out for you, we'll even help you take care of the baby! it's all good, says your father, bc your mother refuses to be in the room with you.
OR choose the man we failed to arrest, and you get nothing. don't ever come back here. you receive no help. and imagine you STILL think there's hope. you bang on your mother's door until your hands are raw to no avail. and then your father takes your hands and says don't bother, you're not our daughter anymore. and you are still pregnant and terrified.
but the guy you love is out there, and so you leave with absolutely fucking nothing, to the point that he's like do you want to pack, or? and you're like no! you're all i want! my dad's not going to pursue us, it's fine!
and then you go to a completely new country and try to settle in, but you've never done any household chores for yourself, and your neighbors think you sound too educated, and you are in the Beyond Uncomfortable stage of pregnancy, and you're like okay the only lucrative skill i have is needlework, so i'll just do that forever. and you are so fucking lonely and so fucking sad and maybe you feel like you're not even allowed to have those feelings bc you chose this!! and your now husband worked and is working so hard to give you a happy life!!
and your legacy, forever, is to be the ungrateful, selfish child who threw her life away for nothing and broke her parents' hearts. you're literally the Tipping Point for your entire family's ruin. your parents don't want to hear abt any of your children. they do not fucking care. your brother resents you for the rest of your life. you go thru all of that, and you manage to make a home for your children and husband, an imperfect one, sure, a frequently stressful one, but you do your best.
and then when you do return to the home you grew up in, you spend the majority of the last years of your life, unbeknownst to you, mourning your husband and potentially two dead children, certainly two children lost. being called 'lady amell' after your parents told you that you had no right to that name anymore bc they wanted you erased from their lives and history. and the SECOND you decide you might want to be happy for yourself again, you are fucking MURDERED.
I’ve been thinking about the overlap between Dragon Age and the Dimension 20 season A Crown of Candy. Both media take place on a continent that disapproves of magic except when sanctioned by the church. Dragons appeared after a long absence. Saccharina would definitely have blown up a Bulbian church if she’d had the chance. I think you could even map a lot of the nations onto each other for an AU.
Candia <—> Rivain
Much more open-minded about magic than most other nations. Both lands have enclaves of minority religions that are disavowed by the dominant religion.
Vegetania <—> Orlais
Home of the dominant religion, and of schemers who long to claim the territory of other nations.
Dairy Islands <—> Ferelden
Small and recovering from a recent war against neighboring powers. Struggling with an uncertain line of succession.
Fructera <—> Antiva
I am going to be honest. This is mostly because they are both Italian.
Meat Lands <—> Tevinter
Professes to follow the majority religion, although it is widely understood that they overlook, if not outright support, older forms of worship that are broadly condemned elsewhere.
Ceresia <—> Anderfels
The Anderfels are the (surface) nation the most affected by the Blight. Blights in real life often affect grain crops such as rice or wheat—I would argue potatoes belong at the bottom of the food pyramid as well, although they are canonically Vegetanian—and so I would expect Ceresia to be hardest hit if we introduced Blights to Calorum.
Spice Rack <—> Free Marches
This isn’t a land that exists in A Crown of Candy, but I think it helps capture the hodge-podge nature of the Free Marches. Also, I personally think spices are a vital food group. Still thinking about a name that might better suit the setting.
"Have you ever fought darkspawn before?" the head Warden, Duncan, asks—which Micah supposes must be what passes for small talk among Grey Wardens. He's watching her with those dark eyes of his and the thoughtfully serious look Micah is coming to realize is his typical expression.
"Mmm. A couple. Not supposed to hunt in the tunnels but, you know." She shrugs pointedly. "And sometimes you find a vein of something nice the miners haven't quite cleaned out yet, if you're looking. 'Course, you see eyes looking at you in the dark about yea high—" she gestures with her hand around head high (her head, anyway) "—and that means you run like the ceiling's caving in on your sorry ass, 'cause there's usually more where that came from."
"I've never seen anything crawling around in the Deep Roads that looks even a little bit edible," says another Warden. Ronald? Randall? One of the clean-shaven ones. She has got to get their names down. From where she's standing the humans may as well all be "the very tall guy" and "that other also very tall guy," which isn't even a little bit helpful for keeping them straight.
"Doesn't matter how edible it looks, you're hungry enough," she says. "Vermin, you know? Rats, nugs, deepstalkers..."
"Bet those taste foul."
"I'll eat a deepstalker. I'm not a coward," says another Warden (the extra big one nearly swallowed up by his own bushy beard), like it's a competition. For all she knows, maybe it is.
"You'll eat anything, Gregor." A few wardens chuckle at that. A shared joke she's not privy to.
"When the nobles go out on their expeditions, you know, they'll only be graced by the presence of the great warrior caste. But when it's just the warriors—not the miners, they don't want you to know where the good stuff is hiding—sometimes they'll hire on dusters as extra bodies. The pay's not awful, if you don't mind the maybe not coming home part." Micah kicks at a rock, and it skitters between their feet and out ahead of them. It aches, she thinks. Her face, for sure, as well as every other part of her body—but mostly her heart. She puts that thought away again.
"I tried to hire on one, once. I can swing a pick and shift rocks around or whatever they want done, right? And I'm mean with a knife. But they were real weird about it. Like they thought I was gonna hike up my skirts—skirts which, I don't think I have to tell you, I wasn't wearing, by the way—and proposition them to put a baby in me while we were down there."
She lets out a short, sharp humorless laugh. "Can you imagine? 'Course, I was younger then but, believe me, just as ugly. But they got weird ideas about brands, you know. Some of 'em they look at you and all they see is a cunt."
No smart response to that, she notes. One of the Wardens—the young one, she thinks, bringing up the rear—clears his throat awkwardly, and she can hear him wince as the sound echoes around the tunnel.
"Even after your exceptional showing in the proving?" Duncan asks, and she looks up from her feet to find him watching her with that same steady gaze, unperturbed. "What do you think it was that they saw in you then?"
Micah coughs, reaches up to rub at her nose—still busted all to fuck and hurts like it too—better to rub at the back of her neck instead. "Dunno," she says, looking away. "Been busy with, you know. Haven't had time to think yet." She wonders if he saw the swell of pride she felt when their eyes had met. Exceptional, he'd said—damn right she was.
"You're, uh..." That's young Warden again. "You—yes, you're a very impressive fighter. We were all impressed... obviously. But also you're. Not ugly."
Surprised, she laughs again, a much nicer sounding sound than before. "You're real sweet, kid, but I know what I look like. Well, actually—" She feels the swollen lump of her nose again, more gingerly this time. "I haven't had a chance to check out the new damage yet, but I know I look like I've been kicked in the face repeatedly, 'cause that's exactly what happened."
Micah aims a grin over her shoulder at him, and hopes whatever that does to her busted up face looks more friendly than frightful. The kids—she can't help but think of them as kids, the young Warden and the other new recruit, the elven mage—have been trailing behind at the rear of the group since they left Orzammar. She hasn't seen enough humans and elves to feel confident guessing the age of any of the others but these two don't look like they could possibly be much older than the girls—and thinking about her nieces twists painfully in her chest in a way that makes it hard to breathe and almost impossible to keep walking forward. Away. So she's been taking one step at a time and trying not to think about. Well.
"Nothin' wrong with being ugly, anyway. Some people just are. And I'd hate to be pretty." She runs a hand through her short shorn hair, then down to feel the at this point probably week-old bristle growing on her jaw. Never was fond of dealing with a headful of hair. "Those girls got their own problems to worry about."
"How do you cook a deepstalker, anyway?" asks the Warden from earlier. "They've gotta be nothing but skin and bones. And, you know, the teeth."
"Still hung up on that, Rondall?" chides another.
"I'm just curious."
"Dunno," Micah says. "Rica—my niece—won't let me do the cooking anymore." One foot in front of the other. "So consider that your warning, if you're expecting to get a hot meal outta me."
"We'll find out if you're as bad as Alistair when it's your turn in the rotation, then." ("Hey!" the young one—must be Alistair—interjects at that.)
"Hey, new kid, can you cook?" asks the big bushy one. Greg? Greg something.
Micah glances back at the new kid, his bright eyes wide with alarm at having been abruptly singled out. They glitter like gems in the dark. "Uh," he says. "I've never tried?"
"Oh boy," says one.
"We're really in for it," says another.
"Do you think they just magic it up out of thin air or what?" muses a third.
"Would you all remember that we presently have a job to do?" Duncan reproves, but he sounds amused.
"What job? Tarimel's on point. Hey, Tarimel, any darkspawn up there?"
"No darkspawn," the elven Warden confirms. Not the recruit, mage kid, but the scout with the bow. Easier to keep track of when there's only two of them. Neither all that chatty, either. Unlike the humans.
"See? No darkspawn yet. Job covered."
"That's strange though, yeah? Should have met resistance by now."
"What, this close to Orzammar?"
"Exactly this close to Orzammar. They're always trying to raid it. Isn't that right, Duncan?"
Micah lets the Wardens talk—Duncan saying something about the Legion of the Dead, now—and lags behind to walk with the youngsters.
"—any darkspawn, just stick close with me," the kid (Alasdair?) is saying quietly to the young mage, who nods glumly. He winces in pain with every step, Micah can see now that she's looking, leaning on that staff of his for support.
The young Warden (oh, that's right, it's Alistair) perks up when he notices her approach. "Sorry I called you pretty back there," he says with a cheeky grin, clearly having found his footing. "Won't happen again." Oh, she does like him.
"You know, I don't think that you did call me pretty."
"Oh, I guess I didn't. Well you look like you got trampled by a rabid bronto, so there's that."
"Stone," she groans, "feels like it too."
"I could do something for that," the mage says, "uh, when we rest."
You should look to yourself first, she wants to say. Instead she says, "Uh, thanks, maybe. Like... magic stuff, right?" She's not sure about the magic stuff.
"I was training as a healer, in the Circle," the kid says. "Before..." He trails off.
Yeah. Before.
"Those... aren't new boots you've got there?" she asks, to change the subject. They're thoroughly worn, but he's grimacing with every step.
"Well, they're Tarimel's boots, is the problem," Alistair tells her.
"Got it," she says. "Do mages uh." She's vastly out of her depth here. "Do they... not wear shoes?" She heard something like that once, she thinks. Or was it... elves? Probably not.
"We're not allowed to go anywhere," the kid says, which isn't exactly an answer.
"And now you're in the Deep Roads," Alistair chips in, sardonically. "Yay."
"Yay," the mage sighs, with even less feeling. "I liked Orzammar better."
"Yeah, kid, me too," Micah says quietly.
"Sorry."
She sighs. "Don't be. Not your fault."
"Micaaaaah," Alistair drawls. "Do you keep calling us kid because you don't remember our names?"
Stone, Micah thinks. It was Alistair, right? "I remember one of your names," she says. Probably.
"Ooh, which one? Prove it. Say one of our names right now."
"My name's Rafael," says Rafael.
"Dammit, Raf," says Alistair.
"Thank you, Rafael," Micah says, pointedly polite. "My name's Micah. It's good to meet you." And then, because she is feeling quite a bit more cheerful than she was just a few minutes ago, she adds, "And don't be a shit, Alistair."
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