#ansburg

[zevaran]

omg i hope your da2 run goes well!!! do you know who you're romancing!!

thank you!! definitely either fenris or merrill <33

[insomnova]

@ansburg replied to your post “came back from the mines to a completely...”:

happened to me too on my first run 😔 dropped, what, 50k+ just to let ppl die 😭

i mean my commander's practically rolling in money rn so that's not an issue but like. i don't understand...... what am i supposed to do just abandon them??? my character would never do that not in a million years and everyone got punished for his mercy 😭😭😭

it's one thing if they betrayed the camp and that's why everyone died but just saving them is what kills everyone??? like bro wtf 😭

[galadrieljones]

The Dead Season: Chapter 58

Chapter 58: Geometry

Spring is near.

Excerpt:

There was a bottle of wine wrapped in a cold rag and stuck in the dirt, and the light from the fireworks mixed with the light from the moon were making the fire look pink. When it got a little low, Solas snapped his fingers, and it it stoked once more. The hour was late. Deshanna and Fisara and Ellas and Yara and Terys and Morrigan and Kieran had kicked off to bed hours ago. But there was a goodbye lingering in the air, and this stirred something up inside the house of Revasan. Rasha was nervous, and Revasan was concerned with making her less nervous. Sene sensed this and Solas sensed her, and together they all just decided to prolong the evening without discussion. It was an unspoken consensus, and maybe it’s not the way all families do things, but here, it was.

“Have the two of you thought at all about where you’re going to live?” said Rasha at some point. She was spinning a piece of twine around the colorful base of a paper flower. Her paper flowers were lovely. Sene had always thought so.

“Not really,” said Sene. She looked at Solas. “Perhaps we should.”

“I imagine that the notion of home will find us where we least expect it,” he said.

“Doesn’t it always?” said Revasan.

(Keep Reading at AO3)

What if Solas had changed his heart? What if he never left? Find out at AO3.

[galadrieljones]

The Dead Season: Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Two for the Road

“Try to remember the people that love you,” he said. “I love you. You make my life better. You’re asking me who you are? You’re just you. That is who I want. That is what you said to me, that first night we spent together. When I asked you if you were nervous, you just shrugged your shoulders, and you said, I’m just me. Do you remember? Don’t forget who you are, Sene.”

@ AO3

What if Solas changed his heart? What if he never left? Find out at AO3.

[modwyr]

🤔

compiling a list of roger ebert quotes where he encounters things other people find sexy that he doesn't understand

[wrenhavenriver]

lilac - dishonored edits 👁👁

😔✊ shoutout to all my fellow tumblr users still obsessed with a ten year old video game, we are blessed and cursed with good taste

[circumscribe]

test

[mstigergun]

Warmth and wonder for everyone's favorite elf

Ask and ye shall receive!

Set in Talen’s first year in Ansburg with some made-up First Day traditions, because I can. Unabashed fluff that is just a slice of a time in Talen’s life in which he was really, really happy. Thanks for the prompt!

so fair to be seen

Here we come a-wassailingAmong the leaves so green;Here we come a-wand'ringSo fair to be seen.

“It’s like you’ve never seen a blighted tree before, little shadow.” Her hand bumps against his shoulder, a thoughtless tether as they slip through the murmuring crowd. Spikes of laughter pierce the cold air, as children squeal while racing around the square. Strings of little lanterns stretch between the crooked buildings, lighting up the habitually dark recesses of the north bank and bathing everything in a golden glow.

“I’ve seen trees,” Talen says, a little breathless despite himself. “Once or twice.”

That earns him a shivery laugh. Shira’s hand drops away and she rubs her palms together against the chill air. “You cold? I told you to bring a scarf.”

“I’m not cold.”

Of course it’s a lie, at least a little. Wintersend won’t be any better than Haring, which was cold enough to make him almost miss his aravel. He spent the whole month shivering beneath his blankets in Shira’s warehouse, until Jasper finally took pity and insisted they bunk together. Don’t know why she can’t get us somewhere better to live, Jasper had whispered in the plush depths of the night. A bleeding warehouse, Talen. On the water. Shira’s going to wake up some morning and find us all frozen, since she hogs the fire every night. Have to chip the ice off us before she can send us out to the south markets.

Oh, I’ll be fine, Talen had breathed, tucking his arms around his friend’s waist as Jasper tugged the blanket up around their chins. It’s just that you shems are delicate.

A cackle in the quiet warehouse, the only sound except for the distant sound of Shira’s snoring and the scurrying of rodent feet. Yeah, right. Now shut up and keep me warm with your superior physique.

So Dalish training in being miserable most of the time and not saying anything about it aside, he’s cold enough in the market that his fingers sting and his face feels stiff. But it almost doesn’t reach him, standing next to Shira as they watch the crowd before move, more a liquid than anything else. Like a flock of birds, singing songs into the wild sky before them.

And maybe it’s because there are so many people around – faces he knows, like Mariam from the inn where Shira likes to take them all for drinks if they’ve been especially good; or Sour Tom, who’ll melt gold trinkets into things easier to pawn and harder to trace; or the Hahren from the alienage, who Talen works very hard to avoid – or maybe it’s because of the lanterns above, or maybe it’s the tree, but…

He’s not cold, not in his bones. Just in his fingers and in the tips of his ears, and also his toes, if he’s really taking inventory.

It’s the tree, he decides, that makes the difference in the end, because as many trees as he’s seen in his life, he’s never seen anything like this one: a fir cut from the forest to the north of the city and propped up in the little hub of crooked alleyways and uneven, narrow streets. Its branches creak beneath the weight of the thousands of flickering candles, the strings of dried flowers and berries and strips of burlap cut from discarded sacks of grain. It stretches all the way into the blackness of the sky above, looming so large above them that Talen can feel the ground slip away beneath his feet.

The little cluster of dwarves in front of Talen and Shira jostles, and Jasper elbows his way past their broad bodies a moment later. “Here,” he says, shoving a crude mug into Talen’s hands. It’s hot, smarting against his cold fingers, and the liquid inside – dark and unknown – is so acrid that Talen actually winces.

Shira snorts, reaching to pluck the mug from Talen’s hand. “You’re too young to drink that shit.”

She tries for Jasper’s too, but he dances away, eyebrows shooting up. “Hey!” he cries. “It’s First Day, Shira. Aren’t you supposed to be something resembling kind and generous?”

“As if you deserve it. Anyway,” Shira’s gaze slides sideways, lights on one of their favourite fencers across the square. “You play nice, kittens. I’ve got business to do.” Like that, she disappears, a familiar and narrow shadow made up of hard edges and singular focus.

Talen shuffles his feet against the cobblestones. He huffs into his hands, staring up at the tree before them.

“Cold?” asks Jasper, sly. He edges closer, until his shoulder bumps against Talen, a thoughtless intimacy.

Talen snorts, watching as a child wanders up to the tree and places a folded piece of paper in its branches. Wishes for the next year, a tradition particular, Jasper has explained, to the north bank of Ansburg. They’ll burn the whole thing at the end of the night, right there in the square. Talen hopes someone’s thought to wish that they don’t set the whole neighbourhood aflame in the process. “You know I don’t get cold,” he tries, but his face is cold enough that the words are clumsy.

“Right,” drawls Jasper. “Of course. Still, all the same.” He  reaches and shoves his mug into Talen’s hands. A heartbeat later, and he’s unwound the coarse scarf from around his neck and tucks it around Talen’s with steady fingers as at ease picking pockets and tucking cards in tricky places as they are brushing against Talen’s skin. “Since it’s your first First Day, and all.”

The scarf is still warm from where it rested against his friend’s skin, and at once Talen can feel heat inching its way up his neck, stinging the cold from his fingertips. He breathes out a dry laugh, half-turns away as he looks again at the tree before them.

In the distance, some cluster has started into a song that must be well-known, since the melody is picked up in pockets around the crowd, off-tune and slurred. They stand, watching as men and women and children edge toward the tree to fill it with their wishes, or else to inhale the spicy forest smell. If Talen squints, he can even make out Cutter and Elly in the distance, cackling as they flick roasted nuts at some of the louder and more obnoxious singers.

Beside him, Jasper sniffs, rubbing his cuff against his nose. “Finish up fast,” he says. “If we’re going to be up all night listening to that, we’ll need to be proper drunk, and one mug won’t do. Plus,” with a conspiratorial tilt of his head, “Shira’ll be furious.”

Talen tips back the contents of the mug, hot and spiced and sharp enough to make his eyes water. “Right,” he says, thrusting the empty cup back into Jasper’s hands and reaching to tug the borrowed scarf closer. “Since that always works out in our favour.”

“She likes being mad at us. Gives her a sense of purpose – so really, Talen, it’s the kindest thing we could do. Since it’s First Day and all.”

“Since it’s First Day,” Talen repeats, sliding past the knot of dwarves and casting a half-wave in Sour Tom’s direction as they pick their way around the revellers toward the steaming pots of… whatever the festive concoction that still lingers on his tongue unpleasantly is.

And when, head pleasantly dizzy and his arm tucked around Jasper’s shoulders, his friend’s body a pleasant line of heat against his side, the tree finally is lit, its flames licking high enough that they must, Talen’s sure, scorch the very stars, well.

He doesn’t worry about a thing, not being cold, or the life he left behind, or what might happen if the sparks crackling off the damp branches land on the wrong surface.

It’s all brightness and warmth and Shira’s raspy laugh and Jasper’s weight against his ribs. And his own wish, quiet and tucked in the shadowed parts of his chest: to have this for the next year, and the one after that, and the one after that. To have this forever.