Last Dragon Age Sketchbook post for now! I will do some in the future, at a better quality >.<
Hawke and the Quizzy get along just too well. The Inquisitor belongs to @headless-beast
Me and @headless-beast have been doing a dragon age rp that I am OBSESSED with!! it’s so good!
Anyway, here’s my Garrett Hawke and Her Quizzy~ He literally just goes by “The Inquisitor”.
Dragon Age Sketchbook! Hawke adores Warden Nora’s mabari, Ban~! He’s a sweet bean. And of course more of Hawke and Quizzy!
Ban and The Inquisitor belong to @headless-beast
A Tal-Vashoth mercenary finds herself in the middle of a holy war by chance. Raised to be brutal and bloodthirsty, it is no surprise she has difficulty adjusting to her new calling as the Herald of Andraste. A retelling of Dragon Age: Inquisition, mostly from the Iron Bull’s perspective, focused on a slow burn romance between him and an unwilling Inquisitor.
AO3
CHAPTER ONE
She is nine years old and she is lawless.
A child with a savage, bloody beat in her heart.
Kaariss paints white lines down her cheeks. She is wild. She is feral. Bare arms twist and sweat in the sun. Legs quiver with muscle. Bloody scrapes drip all the way to her ankles.
“Zaahra,” he chastises.
A snarl.
She is impatient. Her blood boils and she rocks back on her heels as he finishes the last of the vitaar. As soon as his hands come away, she lurches forward and snatches the jewel studded blades from the table. She straps them to her thighs and pants with need.
“I can hear them,” she licks her lips. A scream outside the tent makes her body come alive.
The Tal-Vashoth do not train their children.
The general consensus among them is simple. If you are born into blood, you will thrive off of blood without instruction.
The Valo-kas band is no different. No one ever taught her how to weild a blade. No one taught her to drive it deep and hard in the spaces between bone, nor did they teach her to lick the blood clean from her fingers afterwards. Brutality is expected. Encouraged. And reinforcement breeds terrible creatures.
When Kaariss lets her go, she sprints for the battle. Her bare feet sear the hot, red sands. Blood sprays her in greeting like a warm kiss of rain. She cloaks herself and weaves in between frantic legs. Metal clashes over her head. Her blades turn over once in her blistered palms. Then she dives for the first white neck she sees. The dagger goes deep. Blood rushes up to meet her. Flecks the white vitaar with scarlet jewels. She laughs, cloaks again, and paints the battlefield.
By the time they’re done, she’s ten coins richer and her long white braid is stained red all the way down her back.
Someone plants a hand atop her head and jostles her horns.
“You fight like the asaaranda, little one.”
But she knows better.
She is the thunder. And she is the storm.
—
She is sixteen and she is lost.
She can paint on the vitaar herself. Long, broad strokes. One down the center of her sternum, white, peeling poison turning her skin to steel. Her lips tremble on the edge of questions she knows she should not ask. Pale eyes watch the others, searching for any of the same trepidation in their expressions.
This feels wrong, she tells herself as she straps her daggers to her thighs.
Blood begets blood.
Money is money.
Shokrakar’s voice echoes in her head.
You’re Vashoth. You don’t get to be picky.
But when they sack the manse and kill the servants, a seed of doubt grows roots in her belly. They let her go on her own to check for survivors. Throat-cutter. Her blades feel white hot in her hands. Her horns make sharp shadows on the carpet. She hears a scuffle in the next room over and cloaks herself in darkness.
When she gets closer, a muffled sob spills out from a wardrobe. Without ceremony, she rips the doors open and readies her blades. But when the shadows flee, a little boy is left writhing in their wake. He is curled in the corner of the wardrobe with his knees drawn up, red cheeks puffing with breath. He wails at the sight of her. And she doesn’t blame him.
In these parts, they tell children stories of the dreaded Tal-Vashoth. This one is still young enough to be tucked into bed with such tales, and here she stands, his nightmare incarnate. His parents’ blood is still dripping from her daggers. He screams until his face turns just as red.
She should make it quick. And it is a weakness within her that she does not, can not. Zaahra leans forward and collects him into her arms. He is young enough to scramble against her and tuck his chin over her shoulder. She breathes in his scent. Fear and silk, luxury steep enough that someone else has paid them to kill for it. As soon as the child calms, she sets him back in the wardrobe. Presses a finger to her lips.
He nods and blinks wide, wet eyes at her.
Zaahra closes him in. Someone from the city guard will find him eventually. Then she stands and makes her way back into the main foyer.
“Anything?” Sata-Kas asks when she enters.
Zaahra shakes her head.
“Nothing.”
—
She is nineteen and she is lethal.
Standing among the rest of the Valo-kas, she is fear and threat rolled into one towering, ruthless body. The vitaar is hot and bright against the dark of her skin. Her arms are taut with muscle. They quiver with anticipation as she watches the throes of people push like an angry tide within the Conclave.
Most of her company complained about the assignment. They don’t involve themselves in politicking if they can help it as a general rule. But Shokrakar insists the money is too good to pass up.
Zaahra thinks she just likes to look intimidating in a room full of people who only whisper the word qunari when they’re trying to frighten one another.
Everyone here knows what the Arishok did to Kirkwall. It doesn’t matter that the Qun and the inhabitants of the badlands are completely different beasts. She has been called oxman and brute thrice over already. Perhaps Shokrakar enjoys being belittled and sticking her nose into places it doesn’t belong, but Zaahra has been ready to leave since they stepped foot in the Conclave.
Her bow remains steady at her side. She stares hard at the sea of robes and soft hands.
“What do you think, Adaar?”
Zaahra sniffs, “I think I want to get paid.”
“Wonder if it’s as good as Shokrakar says.”
There is a haze of memory. A series of white hot images. Open, screaming mouths. Green fire. A drip of ice right down to her bones. She remembers nothing but the feel of her bow at the end of her fingertips and the sea of murmuring, somber faces.
Then, she falls to her knees in the rubble. The sky above boils emerald and blood rushes up to hit the backs of her teeth. She plants a hand in the dirt to catch her fall. Her elbow buckles, and her chin cracks against a rock. She smells fire and stone as her eyes wrench shut.
Some pre-relationship fluff for my Adaar, Silver, and her giant boyfriend. It doesn’t seem a lot like fluff, but….. Whatever.
Enjoy! And if you have any questions about Silver’s backstory and her condition, please feel free to ask. :)
It was rare that Silver and the Iron Bull were ever alone together. The Inquisition and its people expected them to find some kind of camaraderie in that they were both Qunari, but the simple fact was, in all but race, she really wasn’t.
She’d spent the first ten years of her life under the Qun, sure, but she was by no means a subscriber to its beliefs or practices. Being born smaller, much smaller than most Qunari, had already proven difficult for her survival, and when it was revealed that she was a mage, it was almost guaranteed that she’d be killed.
But that was all old history, a part of Silver’s life that she’d rather forget. Except that every time she saw Bull, talked to Bull, heard Bull talking, she was reminded. He was “spy this, Ben-Hassrath that, the Qun isn’t for everyone, it’s a good system though, et cetera” and to be honest, it peeved her a little. Not that she’d ever tell him that—for all he knew, she was Vashoth, had never lived under the Qun, was born into the sort of Tal-Vashoth he “didn’t hate.” So she kept quiet. She liked Bull, more than liked him, and she didn’t want the circumstances of her Tal-Vashoth nature getting in the way of… Whatever it was that they had developed.
In any case, this was one of those rare times when Silver and Bull had been abandoned by Varric and Dorian in favor of alcohol and card games. When she asked why the Qunari man didn’t join them, he just shrugged, “Not in the mood, I guess.”
So he sipped at his drink, a strong something-or-other that she wouldn’t dare try. Her physiology made her delicate enough already; she didn’t need to add almost-pure alcohol to that. Meanwhile, she tried to keep her hands from trembling. This particular excursion to the Hinterlands had been taxing, even more so than usual, and it was taking its toll on her. The mage tried not to seem like she was too out of breath or tired as they were exploring—she didn’t need the three of them thinking she was weak or had to be taken care of. So she took small swallows of her glass of water at a time, rehydrating herself, trying to even out her breathing and sooth her shaking hands.
“I know who you are.” Bull’s tone was light, casual, as if he were discussing the weather. But the weight of his words hit Silver like a half-ton druffalo. He was Ben-Hassrath, had probably been fifteen or sixteen years old when the news of her escape had spread throughout Par Vollen. He knew exactly who she was.
But still she tried to play dumb, even as her heart thundered in her chest. “I— I would hope you know who I am. My being your boss and the Inquisitor–”
Bull cut her off, “You not playing dumb is going to make this conversation easier, Boss. You know what I’m talking about.”
Silver drew her eyebrows together, her trembling hands curling into fists in her lap, “So… What then? What are you going to do?”
Bull blew out a sigh, looking into his tankard, “Nothing, at this point. I’ve…” He paused, taking a sip of his drink, “The Ben-Hassrath know you’re Qunari and a mage, but they don’t know of your stature.”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t meet his gaze, “How—? You haven’t told them?”
“No. I’ve omitted any mention of your appearance from my reports.” He answered with no hesitation, no falseness in his tone.
As much as she wanted to think of this as an assurance, she was still suspicious. Finally, she looked up at him and spoke softly “So you’re telling me you’re lying to the Ben-Hassrath. For me.”
That seemed to strike him the wrong way. He furrowed his brows and scowled into his drink. He probably didn’t like the sound of that, him lying to the Ben-Hassrath, especially on a Tal-Vashoth’s behalf. But they both knew that she was more than that, especially to him. She was the Boss, the Inquisitor. And while she knew that the Iron Bull would never intentionally defy the Qun or the Ben-Hassrath, SIlver had more pressing matters to attend to than paying for something she did sixteen years ago.
After what seemed a small eternity, he spoke, his voice level. “Look, Boss, turning you in to the Ben-Hassrath right now wouldn’t benefit anyone. All of this bullshit with this Corypheus and his archdemon? It’s looking like you’re the only one that can do anything about it.” He took a long swallow of his drink, tipped the tankard upward to finish it off.
Silver released a breath, a sigh of relief she didn’t know she’d been holding in. The small Qunari lowered her gaze to her glass of water and took a sip.
"And maybe…“ Bull spoke up, his words slurring the slightest bit, “Maybe I haven’t told them how you look because I don’t want them to know how damn cute you are.”
The Inquisitor gasped audibly, which made the water she’d just swallowed go down her windpipe instead. She tried to clear her throat as discreetly as possible while her face burned.
Beneath the sound of her own coughing and the dull roar of the conversation in the tavern, she heard Bull ask “You all right, Boss?”
