An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I once shared the first half of this fic back in 2015 but did not leave it up because at the time I was very scared to share my work. But I was always proud of this one. It comes from a messy AU with multiple Heroes of Fereldan, Alistair going the Drunk route due to the human noble character's choices, It's the Hawke Twins, and the quizzie was an alienage born, Dalish raised rogue.
This is all that remains of that AU. Notes and other fragments were lost in a move. But I had this so yeah, here you go.
Alistair has left the Wardens, again, and has hunted Loghain down. But not for revenge this time, now he extends the olive branch in hopes they can stop Clarel and the wardens before more people get hurt.
I do remember where the AU was going to go, sort of, and will put that under the cut.
In terms of what happens with the Wardens, with Stroud, Alistair, Loghain, and several of the Heroes still around Ferelden they are a big help to the Inquisition. After Adamant, where Stroud stayed behind, Loghain, Alistair, and the Heroes of Fereldan get into a discussion about Ostagar (before the battle) and land on an old story about a sick Mabari that they collected a specific herb for to heal it after it got sick with the Blight. The Mages of the group realize that could be useful and take this information to the mages back at Skyhold.
At Skyhold Alistair and Fiona sit down and talk and he asks how any of this came to be and she didn't know. Just that once she had him she couldn't re-join (spike party blood didn't work) and so she took him to Maric and returned to the circles.
At some point the fact that Maric was a Reaver comes up. Suana then decides to brew up something using the herbs from the story and dragon blood, similar to the reaver initiation rights, and Alistair volunteers to test it out.
It works. They make more and every warden around who wishes to leave the order is given a chance to drink. There is concern Weisshuapt will retaliate but after what happened with Coryfi-shits they decide they'll take their chances.
OOoo It's Sunday and I have a snippet from something other than Starborn Saga xD Thanks @eridanidreams for the tag :D
If you are reading this and you have something you'd like to share then come join us! Tag!
Tonight's snippet is from my Rekindling the Heart Sam Coe x Doc Melody story.
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The walk back to the spaceport was quiet, save for the small family of mossgnath Jamie and Sam came upon. The largest one rumbled a warning at them and stamped their feet but with a few quick steps to the right they avoided real conflict.
The sun was slowly slipping behind the distant hills as they reached the outer wall of the spaceport, several Akila security guards standing watch giving nods to them as they entered. The spaceport was quiet, save for a pilot arguing with one of the technicians over whether the heatleeches on his ship came with him or not. She rolled her eyes at the argument; it didn’t matter how they got there so long as they killed them.
Jamie took Sam’s hand and led him to her ship on the far end of the landing pads, “we can drop off the artifact and clean up before you head back to Coe Manor.”
He chuckled as she pulled him along, “if you insist.”
They stopped outside her ship, a sleek looking custom job with a Taiyo landing bay open to greet them. She watched Sam step around to the side of the ship, looking over the black and teal paint job and general shape.
“Darlin’, that cockpit is low.” Sam nodded at her Nova Galactic Magellan CX2 attached to a first level hab. The bottom weapon mount sat a mere two feet off the pad.
She laughed, “They let me do it.”
He shot her a look the brim of his hat obscured. The faint curl of his lip told her he was amused and yet still shook his head.
“I wanted to keep the clean flow of landing bay to pilot seat that the original ship had without the super aggressive Deimos style cockpit. They’re good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so cramped and sterile. Nova has better windows and a more comfortable pilot seat. I don’t feel trapped when I’m flying.”
“The cabot series exists too,” He slowly made his way back to the loading ramp, “wouldn’t kiss the ground every time you land.”
“It looked bad,” she shook her head, “plus where’s the fun in that?”
She could see his look now that he stood toe to toe with her. A subtle smile and weary eyes, “won’t be fun when you clip a rock and get stuck grounded on a barren moon.”
“I’ve been flying the Phoenix Aria for 3 years like this and never once hit anything bad enough to be at risk,” she crossed her arms, “Nova Galactic may look held together with gaff tape and dreams but its pretty damn sturdy. Real function over form design.”
“What’d she used to be?” he looked up at the b class grav drive above them, “before you dressed her all up.”
“Oh she was a custom job when I found her,” Jamie led him up the ramp, “found her in the Denebola system. I was surveying the planet and came across a group of spacers guarding what looked like an observation station. I make a point to liberate places like that so they don’t further damage the equipment or find research they shouldn’t have. The place ended up being much bigger and more dangerous than I’d planned for but in the end I found the ship and a unique spacesuit and helmet. There was a whole base down there with extensive surveillance and security systems. I almost thought about staying for a while and getting it up and running but…I had evidence that more spacers knew about the place and didn’t want to have to constantly beat them back so I loaded up the ship with everything I could carry and radioed the team I’d flown in with to tell them I needed to take my new ship to a spaceport to register it.”
They were now standing in the computer core of the ship, the cockpit hatch locked up. Jamie closed the landing bay door and locked it behind her. She watched as Sam slowly explored the computer core, looking over everything she had strapped down and taped to the walls.
“I renamed her the Phoenix Aria when I registered her because I didn’t want the attention. Then I set about redesigning her; she had an armory I didn’t care for and a Deimos captain’s quarters. If I wanted to sleep on a table I’d live out of a living hab. Plus I needed a research lab if I didn’t want to constantly be returning to the university.”
“What was she called before?” Sam returned to her side.
She smiled, “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“She was this gray and olive number named the Razorleaf. Zippy little fighter with a little shielded cargo hold but not something one could realistically live in.”
Sam blinked slowly, his mouth falling open incrementally with each blink.
She laughed at his response, “See, you wouldn’t believe me! Best part of the ship is I don’t get harassed by spacers anymore. They scan my ship and flee the area. Even with the name change, they know the ship. My friend who works at the New Atlantis spaceport said it had to do with the old girl’s registry and SIN. Could undergo a dozen name changes and full body makeover and will still scan as the Razorleaf.”
“The Mantis was real?” Sam finally asked after a long silence.
“Is.”
“Jamie, are you trying to tell me—“
“I don’t go around looking for trouble but I will finish fights I find,” she motioned for him to follow her up the ladder to the second level, “I leave the real crime fighting to professionals.”
2 updates with two fics? Am I on a roll? Maybe...more that it's already done and just needs cleaning up so that's what I'm doing.
Anyway I have a small update to the Starborn Saga here
One of the chapters gets quite spicy but the way I've written this most of the spice isn't tied to important plot points so they could be skipped and I'll make chapter summaries when that isn't the case.
anyway, yeah, more Starborn Sam and Starborn Lila as things leave Neon and head to Kryx
I've got an update for my Sam Coe x Doc Melody fic, Rekindling the Heart up today on ao3.
I've had these sitting in a random writings file on my laptop since early october and now that I have an account I'm trying those pieces I'm proud of up.
Here's an excerpt :
A weird energy filled the back chamber of the cave. A harmonizing hum and the floating chunks of cubed mystery mineral unnerved Sam but Jamie moved about the chamber with ease. She was cleaning the walls and floor with a cutter of any mineable chunks of the cubic mineral. The artifact was sitting in the center of the chamber, embedded in a pillar of stone.
“Why?” Sam asked as she continued to ignore the artifact for the veins of greenish mineral.
“Caelumite has very interesting properties and seems to react to the artifacts so I gather a large sample wherever I find it to compare it with other data sets. If you’re so impatient you can grab the artifact while I work,” she turned and hit the artifact with the cutter beam, knocking all the mineral off the prize.
“You’ve found others?” Sam’s eyes widened, “it took us a long time to piece together how to find these. Vlad’s up in the Eye all the time these days searching for anomalies. And you just…found them?”
“I imagine it was that way for Constellation the first time you found one, whoever did that,” Jamie shrugged and tucked her cutter away, satisfied with her collection, “I was exploring a deserted mine on some barren moon I don’t remember where with some uni colleagues. We were hired by the company who built the mine to figure out why it was deserted and could keep any valuable salvage or data we found in exchange. I was working on a short piece on modern mining practices and how they mirror and diverge from ancient practices and looking at a deserted mine was perfect.”
“And dangerous,” Sam leaned against a boulder, “miners don’t run unless things went real bad.”
“Correct,” Jamie nodded and walked closer to the artifact, “what we found on the foreman’s computer were numerous messages warning corporate that spacers were swooping the landing pad and picking off workers and supply runs weren’t showing up. All ignored of course. Spacers had eventually cut their way through the upper facility but stopped about halfway into the mine. A mostly busted slate revealed they found something deep in the mine that scared them enough to leave and warn off other spacers.”
“And you all kept going?” Sam didn’t know if he should be impressed or terrified.