#andrastianism

[nikiferous]

The Chantry / The Inquisition faction for DATV

A part of my worldstate i wish to share; many aspects of the faction are tailored specifically to my own worldstate, but other are not, and I encourage to take from this what you want and make your own spin!

[varrictethrasoilytits]

Parallels Between Solas Regret Murals and Chantry Iconography

[batterycows]

It’s called The Chant of Light not the Read Aloud of Light, man I wish there’d been so much more singing in DA

[theluckywizard]

Decidedly Human

For @rutherfest Day 1: faith and family🥰

Pairing: Cullen x Rose Trevelyan

WC: 1525

Rating: T

No CWs

Summary: Cullen finds the newly minted Herald of Andraste, Lady Rose Trevelyan, curled up in the chantry's shrine in Haven on a sleepless night.

Read on AO3

🕯️

It should be illegal to be so monumentally tired and incapable of sleep. Cullen had sat for too long on the edge of his cot, scrubbing his face, considering doffing his armor for the night. Like most nights he concluded he’d rather be sleepless on his feet than sleepless staring at the restless flutter canvas above him as he fights with the float of nausea within. And like most nights, he knows where he’ll end up.

Continued below 👇

His breath stiffens into a crisp plume against the darkness as he walks the perimeter, searching for shoddy work, for needed repairs, for soldiers derelict in their duties to startle straight. Even the villagers want to look occupied in his presence at half past eleven. His destination pulls on him, unwavering in its comfort, in the nearly two decades of routine, and then the route to the chantry he quickly memorized delivers him— up the main steps in a jaunt past the Singing Maiden to threaten propriety into slovenly soldiers with his mere presence. Tonight a lay sister wobbles to her feet from where she’d planted herself in a snowbank, begging the commander’s pardon. He nods, hiding his face before an unruly snicker fidgets in his chest.

The War Room calls on him as readily as the shrine. Devotion and work once danced and warred in the same corners of his head and heart but no longer. Here there’s no expectation, no call to prayer despite its origins as a project of the Divine. Nor is there the promise of that dulcet blue luminescence, that raw power lingering vibrant on his tongue as Benedictions slides softly over it. 

In their blood the Maker’s will is written.

Cullen shudders, the words stained by that morning so long ago watching the very foundations of his world fracture. A woman slumped and frail on the floor of her quarters, muttering the same bit of the Chant as her mind slips away, already nursing a secret corruption. Nausea flares within him. 

“Commander, Ser.” A door opens for him and then a dry cloud of kicked up snow follows him in. Cullen stamps his boots, searching the nave for company and finding none, heads to the carved statue of Andraste tucked into the aisle, lit by the light of dozens of votives. Like most Fereldan depictions, she carries her sword and shield, her wooden gaze a hollow comfort, like she can’t actually see the waver of his devotion within him.

He clears his throat to begin his prayer and then hears it— a choked voice and a wet sniffle, slogging through a bit of Trials.

“In the long hours of the night When hope has abandoned me…”

He contemplates a silent retreat and then he notices a stretched out leg and the subtle wash of yellow-green magic against stone. Andraste’s supposed herald propped up at the prophet’s feet, tending a candle between her knees, its light captured in the smear of tears across her cheek. 

Judgment flinches within him, that she’d taken a candle from its proper place. He’d once done the same, similarly wedged between the statue and the wall, desperately homesick. It isn’t the gentle words of a sister he remembers first, but the bite of hot wax on new skin as he’d rushed to return the votive. There had never been a rule about the candles, but the memory sowed one within him anyway. A swell of sympathy floods in.

“I will see the stars and know Your Light remains.”

He joins in a whisper, a mere instinct. Foolishly. Where she fumbles the words, his are steady.

“I have heard the sound A song in the stillness, the echo of your voice…”

Lady Trevelyan cranes to look at him and curses before glancing away, furiously wiping away tears on a bit of sleeve.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I’ve disturbed you.”

“No. I didn’t think anyone would be here,” she explains, her voice raw.

“There usually isn't. Except for me. And the spiders.”

“Do you remember the next line?” she asks. “I keep repeating it like it will come to me. The echo of your voice…”

Cullen snuffs an appreciative laugh.

“Calling creation to wake from its slumber,” he finishes. A nearly silent sigh vacates her.

“It was my father’s favorite. Thank you.” A fresh tear glints beneath the strange light of the mark in her hand. He hesitates, tapping his gloved hand against his thigh. It’s only been days since she learned she’d lost him. 

“I’ll give you some privacy,” he says.

“You can stay,” she says quickly, over her shoulder. “I mean— we can share her.”

Cullen nods and sinks to one knee, bending his head in search of guidance, but curiosity sparks as he watches her thumb at her palm.

“I’m sorry about your father.”

Silence pools between them long enough he wonders whether he’s overstepped.

“I keep thinking to myself, ‘I need to tell Father’,” she says, her breath fluttering as she speaks. “It’s absurd. To want to talk to him about his own bloody death.”

He wishes he’d felt the something like that when the news of his own parents washed through him, too wild-eyed after Kinloch to see it as anything but an abstraction.

“Perhaps,” he offers. “But— it’s also decidedly human.”

“I’ve had enough of being human,” she retorts, the corner of her lips jumping slightly.

“What would you prefer to be?”

“I’d settle for a slug right about now.”

A smile creeps into the serious set of his expression. “I’m well-acquainted with the feeling.”

“Andraste’s Holy Slug,” she muses.

Suddenly it’s clear. Lady Trevelyan is drunk.

“May I walk you home?”

“Home? Bit of a hike don't you think?”

“To your cabin,” he says. “It’s— slippery out.” She gathers herself, rising to her feet with a slight stutter to one side as she finds her balance. She’s splotchy, wisps of her red hair dark and damp with her grief, but she lifts a brow.

“Only if you can tell me the next verse.”

Cullen studies her, noting the cheek in the challenge and clears his throat, 

“How can we know You?

In the turning of the seasons,

in life and death,

In the empty space where our hearts Hunger for a forgotten face?”

“They really drill you in the Order, don’t they?” she murmurs, trying her best to look unimpressed.

“I spent long years as a recruit. Memorizing passages kept us on our toes.”

Her breath snares in seeming judgement. The Herald chews her lip before finding some kind of nerve. “Don’t you regret it? The things they asked you to do?”

All of it. 

But he didn’t come here to go digging.

“No.”

Her eyes narrow doubtfully. Heat spikes in his cheeks.

“I can see myself home.” As she turns and makes for the exit, Cullen winces when her path meanders to the right.

“Forgive me, Herald, but you’re—”

“Oh is it your holy duty to accompany me?” He snorts at her clumsy insolence and answers it with a gentle prod, thinking of the lay sister.

“Only to pull you out of the inevitable snowbank.” She huffs, but wrestles with a smile before continuing on. He jogs to catch up with her, amused by the jut of her chin and the doggedness of her steps, but he keeps up. Halfway down the road to her cabin she stops, challenging him with bright eyes. 

“The next verse. What is it?”

Cullen combs his memory momentarily until he catches the next thread of Trials.

“You have walked beside me…” He exhales a laugh into the snow. Lady Trevelyan only looks smug.

“Down the paths where a thousand arrows sought my flesh.

You have stood with me when all others

Have forsaken me.

Well I don’t exactly think you’ve been forsaken.”

“Still. It’s a little funny,” she starts walking again. He keeps up, feeling like someone’s laid a fire beneath his ribs. Her impish glance lands like another bit of kindling. “The knight and his sluggish charge.”

You’re uncommonly quick for a slug. He’s mercifully able to tamp down the retort, clinging to his reserve, shaking his head in amusement. At her cabin he stands back, watching her fuss with the latch.

“It’s frozen,” she declares, slumping back against the door. Indeed the imperceptible sag of the snowpack above causes the icicles to curl 'round the bottom edge of the thatch, feeding meltwater to the spot in question. He sighs— for some reason— and goes to assist.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, holding her marked palm like a mage’s luminescence spell. “Who knows how long I’d have wallowed at Andraste’s feet if you hadn’t come along.”

Cullen contemplates reminding her he’s there most nights, that she doesn’t need to be alone, that he’d be happy to fill in the blanks in the Chant she can’t remember, but he swallows back the impulse. He lays into the latch with an armored elbow. The door swings open.

“You’re welcome,” he says, nearly smiling. “Good night, Herald. I’m hope you’re feeling better.”

She purses her lips slightly, considering him once more and then a spark in her eye lights that fire inside him anew. “I shall weather the storm.”

The door is long closed when he finally answers, still standing there foolishly, burning like a sacred candle.

“I shall endure.”

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This is a brand new Cullen POV scene for Chapter 4 of my DAI long fic In the Shattering of Things 🥰

[kilannad]

you know what gets me? The Inquisitor is Maker Marked.

setting aside Andraste and whatever really happened during the war against the Imperium, Veilguard entirely recontextualizes what being Herald means, whether you approve of the retcons or not.

Harding almost gets there in Veilguard during one of the post-memory cutscenes, but she doesn't quite carry it all the way. Yes the elvhan built Arlathan, but there's more in the Chant than just the Golden City.

The Maker made the Veil. The Maker built the Golden City and cast out mortals from it. The Maker cast down the Old Gods and left them dormant beneath the ground.

With Veilguard, we now know that Solas did all those things. Maybe didn't build the Golden City specifically, but he's the one responsible for moving it to the Veil.

Wisdom. Solas. Dread Wolf. Maker.

They call them the Herald of Andraste because they saw 'Andraste' save them from the Fade and because they carry the Maker's mark. The first is blatantly false, but the second? It's Fen'Harel's orb that marked her. It's the Dread Wolf's anchor. Which makes it the Maker's anchor, though no one knows it.

I don't know what Andraste was hearing/seeing from her visions during the war with the Imperium. If it was spirits whispering to her old secrets she didn't understand, or if Mythal, buried in someone deep in the Alamarri tribes nudged history, who fucking knows. But humans have been worshipping an elvhan god--the worst of them, ironically (from the elves perspective at least)--and using it to justify genocide for nearly a thousand years.

do you think Solas realized? do you think he understood that his actions, completely out of context, gave rise to the biggest religion since the fall of the Evanuris? do you think he considered this just another sin to be laid at his feet?

[lady--lucrezia]

The Raven

a tiny bit DA inspired (Andrastianism)

[raven-6-10]

Ever since it was revealed that the Antivan Crows had their roots in a group of monks, I headcanoned that the Crows are Andrastian but like a spicy kind of Andrastian that would get an Exalted March called on them if anyone knew about that.

[exhausted-archivist]

When I tell you yesterdays posts about Andrastianism has been turning itself in my head endlessly, I cannot begin to properly word it. I got a huge dissection of how its depicted, from Leliana's commentary about her cloister to nearly every openly horny/non-chaste Revered Mother, Sister, and Brother.

All the way down to the Divine who does have erotic art and literature and Divine Theodisia II who gave birth on the Grand Cathedral of Val Royeaux's steps. To the regular use of contraceptives in cloisters.

Its honestly a fascinating topic and a fun little deep dive I wasn't expecting.

This was the type of stuff I was thinking of when I was talking about Andrastianism not having chastity/abstaining as a standard practice. That is not a virtue any of the Chant actually preaches along with the fact it is not mirrored outside of two very insular sects that are already outliers among the Chantry.

Coupled with Leliana in general seems rather uninformed of what is or isn't allowed with Chantry members, as she thinks that the Antivan priesthood doesn't drink the wine they make. We know that Andrastian priests do in fact drink wine? We hear about it in the same game lol

Then you have the fact that while the Divine couldn't marry - See Cassandra's romance, where she will still continue the romance. It is suggested it is possibly done so in secret but a lot of the text makes it sound less so. Where in contrast you have Leliana who openly carries on a relationship if romanced by the Warden. The difference between the two is the publicity - which is an interesting conversation right there.

Orlesian society in general says you can have any romantic/sexual affair you want. But the key is you are supposed to be discrete. They have alcoves dedicated to romantic moments in public and have a sign out that states pretty much "hey don't get caught doing something risque".

Which has me chewing on the concept that it isn't the need to appear chaste or anything that is the expectation, but a level of decorum is expected. An Orlesian standard that leaked into the Orlesian Chantry, much like how the Game leaked into the Chantry even though the priesthood is supposed to be above it. The expectation of decorum seems to be on par to how a ruler isn't supposed to be candid about their romance or love.

While in contrast with the Imperium Chantry, who does angle themselves to be the contrast, the priesthood is openly allowed to marry. But no where does it contrast the expectation of chastity or abstaining - something that would have been noted because they're very keen on pointing out their differences, and it is on par with something that Dorian would have also poked at it.