Main World State: Altharistyrsa a.k.a very messy ‘yes I like to ignore canon’ world state
• Kala Mahariel | Two-handed Warrior | Romanced Leliana in DAO | Anora is queen, Alistair stays a warden | Currently in Urthemiel’s body and magically bound to Morrigan (ritual gone wrong)
• Ren Hawke | Force Mage | Rivalmanced Isabela | Sided with mages | Red!Hawke who basically hates everyone yay
• Altharis Lavellan | Rogue (both double daggers and bow. She’s bad at both) & Fire Mage | Weird relationship with Leliana | Exiled from Clan Lavellan | Briala rules | Cassandra is both the Inquisitor and the Divine
Both Altharis and the world state in general has the same tag, since the world state name is the same and it’s all about her anyway (well, kind of).
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(Planned) Second World State:
Rogue double daggers Brosca or Tabris, romance Morrigan. // rogue hawke rivalmance Merrill // either fem cadash who romances cassandra or adaar dorimancer.
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Mass Effect OCs
• (Planned canon Femshep, havent finished the game) Hans Shepard | Paragon | Vanguard | Earthborn sole survivor | romanced Ashley in me1, then Miranda in me2 - forever. Ashley survives to get her heart broken yay (love you ash).
kala on my mind again aughh my girl who has a childlike curiosity and excitement and whimsy, picked up a big sword at 10 years old and trained to swing it to impress merrill who absolutely did not get it was for her,, ended up with a scar bc ofc it was too big for her. an only child who immediately got attached to tamlen and so eager to call him brother and treats him as one. whose coping mechanism to her parents’ death was to make everyone around her laugh so they think she’s not hurting. who vaguely remembers encountering a cub at 5 years old, which turned into an older girl crying about a mirror. who likes pretty dresses and shiny armors, and jewelries, who twirls her hair and blushes and giggles when the weird pretty girl said she likes her hair
and now she’s in the body of an archdemon she vowed to defeat. But still the whimsy stays. the joy of love and living persist
[stands in front of the mic covered in blood] i love divorce does anyone else love divorce i will always love exploring the dynamics between two women with broken vows [A dragon roars in agreement from a distance] Thank you, Kala Mahariel. you’re a fucking real one
(Voice of a person who’s going crazy reading His Majesty’s Dragon) I just think that, since my Mahariel, Kala, was bound into the body of Urthemiel, due to the failed ritual— her relationship with Morrigan would be akin to Laurence and Temeraire's. Kala and Morri are now bound by magic, in which if Kala is hurt Morrigan is also hurt and vice versa, and that their minds have melded, and that if Morrigan calls for Kala, Kala would ascend from the Deep Roads and fly to Morrigan’s side, perhaps at an instant (I have not yet decided how that works). But regardless of the weird things that come with it, like how Morrigan can’t even begin to separate Kala’s memories of her time with Leliana from her own, the most important thing is they are on equal grounds. They are partners. Not romantic or platonic soulmate but a secret, undiscovered thing.
the oc as romancable companion post is so fucking good it has led me to places i had never even considered. like I made altharis specifically to be this funny “what if the herald can just say ‘no’ to being forced as the inquisitor?” and what if she’s also extremely op to the point it’s ridiculous. and what if her whole romantic part is being weird about leliana
so i’m thinking more things to add for a romancable companion altharis. i think other than her writing would just be so off, like the writers (me) don’t know what to do with her, she gives you these ‘oh this romance would be so good’ promising vibes at first and never fucking delivers.
(very long nonsense below)
the surprising thing is she’s the one who flirts with you first. you gotta be a non-human woman to trigger the dialogue. she was recruited after you encounter her unconscious in the temple of sacred ashes, but she’s not playable yet and only helps fight the demon as an npc you can revive (like leliana). when you meet leliana, there’s a weird 5 seconds scene where they bump into each other and only stare and leliana glares at her like shes already fucking annoyed. then it cuts into the demon scene and altharis immediately runs away and goes into stealth mode and she also keeps missing her shots.
she’s the one who wakes you up at haven. if youre male she’s like “huh? what am i doing here? oh, right, i think the seeker wanted me to wake you and tell you to meet her in the chantry.” no dialogue options because she immediately leaves disinterested. if you’re a woman (human included in this scene) she’s like “you remind me of someone. when you’re unconscious, i mean.” all dialogue options are basically what the hell does that even mean and she stutters telling you cassandra wants you to meet her and immediately leaves and trips on the way out
for the rest of haven, the only dialogue options are asking her who she is, why she was at the temple, why she’s here now and an option to tell her to leave. Altharis would reply to the questions with non-answers like “I suppose that’s a fair question, Herald.” she stays silent and when you ask her again she shrugs “Perhaps you could let me be for a moment to think for an answer?” she never did btw.
(regarding the option to tell her to leave sera-style, Pre-HLTA she wouldn’t even object, just says “That is wise, yes.” and she gets deleted from the game, even her files. you need to do fresh reinstall to start a new save with her. nah i’m kidding. If it’s post-HLTA, the option would just make her chuckle and say “Yeah... No.” she won’t ever fucking leave no matter how low the disapproval is but the option is still there to laugh at you.)
when you get to skyhold, she’s at the broken ramparts below the rookery, and she keeps staring into the mountains below her. non-human women pc ask her what she’s doing and she just goes “It is always a pleasure to meet you, Herald. The scenery certainly has nothing on your presence as a whole.” You can answer with a flirt option where your dialogue is just laughing very awkwardly and say Thank you...?? and she immediately smiles like she’s ready to fuck you.
You can only lock in romance with her before HLTA. If you bring her to the Fade post-romance it’s a guaranteed break up because she will have some very, very weird dialogues with Justinia’s spirit, among them are “Welcome home, child.” and the whole party will ask, especially Cassandra, and Altharis would genuinely look like she wants to kill herself. So yeah if you’ve decided to lock in the romance you have to not bring her to the fade.
After the quest you can’t ask her about it or it will trigger the disappearing-from-Skyhold thing like if you ask her what her deal with Leliana is. she’ll be back when you travel back, but if you ask for the third time you get hit with a huge disapproval points.
The kiss scene is full on making out at the secret basement underneath Skyhold. she even moans at some point. but when she does she suddenly pushes you away with an inhuman force that even if you’re qunari you get pushed to the wall until it shakes. She apologizes but leaves. she'll still be there, if you ask her about what happened, she says she doesnt know what youre talking about.
(you’d expect she has a scene with Leliana. But this is dragon age inquisition, the game fucking sucks, so it will only be one (1) ambient dialogue with Leliana’s runner, where leli says ‘See to it that the boy is with her at all times.’ the most acceptable theory is that the boy is Cole and Leli for some reason asked him to watch altharis.)
you can’t dance with Altharis at Halamshiral. she would still be on the balcony but she brings you some cheese instead. she makes a comment about Morrigan and how she thinks Morrigan and Leliana know each other. if you choose anything but Briala she will straight up say “I don’t think what we have is meant to last long. But for tonight, let us enjoy it.” You can’t say anything to object this. she doesnt break up with you but it’s a guaranteed “Altharis leaves without a word and not a trace of her is ever found” ending.
she will offer to drink from the Well. Morrigan will be so vehemently against it to the point your pc is like “Alright alright it won’t be her be calm”
she won’t be in trespasser regardless of the choices you make. If you’ve somehow done the impossible and secured the “Altharis leaves with only a message that she has a mission to do somewhere. You keep in touch through letters, though her responses are getting less frequent and you’re not sure if there is even a relationship anymore”, Charter is the one who tells you vague updates on how Altharis is doing. If you ask how she knows all of this, Charter says she’s under strict orders to not say anything more (Implying Leliana told her to)
Altharis is also never mentioned in Veilguard.
anyway other triggers for her to immediately break up with you:
- Not letting Morrigan drink from the well, unless you’re a fellow elf.
- Letting Leliana kill the sister in valence
- Making Cassandra divine lololol
- Making Leliana divine.
- Lying to Vivienne about the wyvern heart
- Letting your clan be destroyed (not Lavellan i guess since altharis is Vaguely Lavellan)
- being nice to cullen
last one is a joke. Kind of.
also possible discourses i can think of:
- Definitely that her romance is just fucking bad
- a few would say it reinforces the harmful fear that lesbians are creepy. god forbid we’re a little weird about our crushes
- no option as an elf to bond with her about being elves and i 100% agree i just don’t think bioware would let that happen.
- Leliwarden fans would probably be mad that you dont have the option to tell Altharis that she’s “married happily to my Grey Warden” or that it’s out of character for Leliana to not tell altharis to leave her alone (when in game Altharis never even bothered Leliana btw.)
- the correct side of tumblr would defend her because she’s a non-white female elf lesbian and that her character actually has so much depth. the other side argue that she’s only treated like a poorly-delivered joke in the game and romancing her is racist and homophobic actually. The one who said this is probably white. There will be one tumblr user that finally says the obvious “Actually I like Altharis because her whole character is just funny” with a detailed explanation why she should’ve given everyone a good laugh. Altharis' writer agrees so hard she reblogs it and fucking pins it to her blog.
Anyway. Badly written scene between Morrigan and Kala.
“It could be done,” Morrigan says, her back turned towards Kala.
If a dragon could frown, Kala would display such an expression now. “What could be done?”
“I suppose I could... Transfer this ‘bond’ you and I have to Leliana, should you want to.” Morrigan says it the way she always says things: a matter-of-fact statement of pure observation. “We may need a few things, but—”
“Another ritual?” Kala lets out an air through her nose, both in disbelief and amusement. “Woman, you are out of your mind.”
“Then what else do you wish me to do, beast?”
Kala wishes she knew, in her present form, how to shrug. She always did love the gesture, because often she did not know many things. But for now, she sits on the ground with her long tail curling on her side, and lifts one of her wings and forearms.
“I could be bound to worse people than my favorite mage.” The mage in question does not say a thing, but even in the dark Kala can see a faint blush creeping onto her cheeks. She does eventually accept the offer for shelter, seating herself beside the dragon, and burrow herself onto her side.
can i hear more about the altharistyrsa worldstate? hm idk maybe some tidbit about that comes to your mind first? i find it very intriguing
Hi vosqui thank youu sm for asking i always jump up and down when i talk about this. Also im so sorry you asked for tidbits but I ended up with. This. there’s just a lot that I wasn’t sure how to be brief djkalfkdka. anyway
This world state was born from two things: 1) My inability to play vg because I dont have a pc good enough to play it (though even if I did not sure it’d be my priority after hearing all the criticisms) 2) my frustrations that as an inquisitior, especially non humans, you can’t be more vehemently against being a leader / religious figure.
I am also a fan of creating female characters that are just weirdo pathetic lesbians with so much guilt that she blames herself for every little bad thing that happens. Altharis is that, basically.
(a lot that happens in this world state is just messy drafts I put in one big masterdoc. Lots of things I want to change, lots are only concepts. I also have like a 13k+ words fic of when they first got to Skyhold that’s been abandoned unfortunately LOL. So im sorry in advance for the amount of vagueness)
Anyway, so when they got to Skyhold, when they offered that stupid sword for her to raise, this happened:
In here Altha was still very much a pessimist who didn’t want to lead all these people to death. she put up this idgaf front that made her act like a jerk sometimes. the thing is, this was also after In Hushed Whispers, where she met Leliana in the future who hated her very much. Long story short Altharis naturally added that to her list of guilt. (An important small detail: she ended up conscripting the mages bc of future Leliana saying “no one should have this power”)
This event also led her to believe that magic is inherently evil and it makes her more ashamed of her power. Especially after she accidentally killed Keeper Deshanna with it— which is the reason why she was exiled from clan Lavellan.
She’s a very late bloomer, when this happened she was twenty four, most definitely because her magic is very linked to her negative emotions (mostly anger and despair). She and Deshanna had a complicated relationship which I would not go into details (I’d make a separate post about that because I’d need to put some TWs) and last they argued, Altharis just snapped and her magic just... blew up, literally.
So, after a lot of arguments and discussions, Altharis stayed as Herald of Andraste (couldnt help what people called her) while Cassandra slowly was becoming seen as a leader. Eventually she begrudgingly took the title, which eventually gained her much favor to become the next divine, while Altharis became kinda just one of the soldiers.
Ok this has gotten too long so I’m just gonna list bullet points for more important things to know about the world state:
• Charter is very important in here, arguably even more so than Morrigan.
• Most of the big problems in this world state do come from Cassandra being both the Inquisitor and the Divine. She did some very fucked up things.
• Cassandra and Josephine developed a relationship during DAI which would lead to a secret marriage when Cass is Divine. Their relationship is very much unhealthy.
• Kala Mahariel was Leliana’s wife in DAO but everyone thought she died. Until Morrigan summoned a fucking dragon thats suspiciously shaped like an archdemon Kala defeated. and said dragon introduced herself as. Kala.
• Altharis and Leliana will never have a defined relationship but they have this weird undying loyalty to each other that nobody can explain. Not even me. Though there are some things that happened pre-Inquisition (during DAO... In the Temple of Sacred Ashes...) that possibly make them spiritually connected. I’ll make a long post about that in the future ^_^
• Divine Cass era focuses a lot on the complex relationships/friendships between Josie, Cass, Viv, Morrigan, Leli, Altha, Charter, and maybe Meredith (I’d just planned adding Meredith recently so not much about it yet)
• Since VG doesn’t happen, I’m still figuring out how to deal with that properly. I really do want elven gods to be actual gods, though, but I’ll need some time to think about how to write that
